February 12, 2013
WEATHER DISASTERS
REad to learn more about - Hurricanes - tornados - monsoons - Blizzards - Indiana Weather 1
Letter to the Publisher Dear Readers,
We have also learned about monsoons/blizzards Our group has monsoons occur mostly in been working on Indiana the southwestern U.S. We weather. What we have also learned all about the learned about tornadoes weather in Indiana and is very interesting, For how the annual rain fall is example tornadoes can 40 inches. You can learn be very unpredictable and much from reading this can happen any where magazine and we hope and happen any time. you like it. What surprise me that we really don’t know that Sincerely, much about tornadoes. Jack Connolly, Nathan We wonder why. The U.S Brill, Jacob Perriera, and is the country that has the Nick Baker most tornadoes. About (Editors) 1,000 tornadoes happen every year in the U.S and although most tornadoes only last a few minutes they can destroy a lot. We have also learned about hurricanes and how the number one cause of death is drowning. Hurricanes are the only weather disaster that have been given its only name. 2
Hurricane
By: Jack Connolly I was laying on my front lawn on a warm fall day. Not much happens in Naples, Florida. Not many guests visit, not many events just a nice town for a family like mine. My friend laid next to me his name was Danny Williams he was a good man of 25 years, we have been best friends since grade school. I would have done anything for him. He was my greatest friend and I couldn’t help what happened next. It was a surprisingly windy day and you could feel the warm ocean air blowing on your skin from where I lived. We loved Florida nothing ever really happened here. I shut my eye’s feeling very relaxed, until I hear Danny jump up. I didn’t think much of it until i hear him say, “ John you might want to see this.” Something was wrong with the ocean the strong winds seemed to be doing something with the ocean. Danny had some prior knowledge on weather and from the look in his eyes he
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knew what was happening. “H...h..hu..hurricane,” Danny just made the words out like if they were very hard to say. We ran into my house and if Danny wasn’t there we would have never known what to do. I am an only child my parents had already saw the hurricane warning on the TV and were freaking out. Danny asked what was there hurricane plan and they both looked puzzled. He explained how every family should have a hurricane plan incase of emergency. My parents never planned this to happen and were desperate for information from Danny. He looked at the three of us as if coming from deep thought,” Well then lets get to work.”
energy and being pushed by the high powered winds creating a hurricane. He told us that we were very lucky to have an higher elevated house so we don’t have to worry so much about flooding. We were ready for it to hit us we had a radio, flashlight, and bottled water. sitting on the floor away from anything that could move/ slide.
Once it hit us we were lucky we locked the doors. All I could hear was things nailing against the door. While we were waiting it to pass Danny was explaining more about hurricanes. He told us that their is a scale called the beaufort scale that measures how much power the hurricane has. A hurricane has to at least 12 on the beaufort scale. He also Danny ordered me to go explained how this would be to the garage and get as many the third hurricane this year pieces of cardboard as I can and we all discussed what find. He made me use them to name they might call it that cover the windows. While we started with a “C” (Hurricanes were doing this he explained get named by when they how the warm water was happen in the year and in combining with the sun heat alphabetic order so the third
Hurricane
hurricane of the year starts with a “C”). The storm started to get more violent. I couldn’t believe that the house was not in pieces on our driveway. Danny was the first to notice this and ran to the garage and got a piece of rope. He tied the rope around the four of us and strapped it to a shelf that was bolted to the wall. He told us that it will probably hold and it is the safest thing they can do at the moment He started to tell us more about hurricanes and most of it I found really fascinated. He told us that in hurricanes the number one death is drowning, he also gave us an comparison to how dangerous a hurricane can be. He said that every second a hurricane releases the energy of 10 ATOMIC BOMBS!! That was one of the things I found most fascinating to think how much power weather has compared to man made equipment. There was a big noise at the door and my mom jumped so high she could have touched the moon. Right when I thought we were lucky, for the door not breaking, it flew open! My dad got up to close it but Danny pulled him back down. “I got it,” Danny said in all seriousness. My dad nodded his head. Right before he reached the door a huge wind flew in and he flew outside. I wanted to run after him but the rope was to tight for me to get out of it. I watched him get up from the grass while the winds were slowing down. He saw my worried face and gave me a thumbs up. Then all of a sudden the winds picked up he grabbed onto the porch but it was no use. A near by tree got pulled from the roots and landed on Danny. My dad managed to get up and slam the door shut without the wind taking him away. We sat there tied by rope until the storm passed over. My best friend Danny showed me the importance of being prepared for weather disasters. Today, I’m a tornado hunter and have experienced 6 different tornados. Danny showed me my true passion of weather disaster. Danny Williams is my one and only best friend.
Tornado
By: Nick Baker
! It was the middle of june and my dad was sleeping while I was playing video games with my friend. The wind was roaring and I was worried cause I never heard wind like that before. Then my dad come running in saying we have to get out of here now. We went down to the basement and told us every thing he knows about tornadoes. He told how he knew that a tornado was coming because the sky looked like water emptying a sink and the wind was blowing really fast. ! After the tornado was over we went up stairs and everything was messed up. But the good was that our house wasn't destroyed. All of the other house where destroyed except ours and three other houses. The rest were completely destroyed. There were cars upside down and there was a huge tree in our house. Luckily nobody was hurt. I asked my dad why did it miss our house and he said
that tornadoes can be picky like that, for example a tornado could only destroy one house and leave the others. What surprised me is that we really don’t know that much about tornadoes For example we don’t know when or where a tornado is going to happen and that we could only predict that one is going to happen if we have already seen one or the clouds start spinning.
tornado sucks up determines what the collar would be for example if it sucks up allot of dirt its going to be black and if it sucks up allot of metal it would be a dark white. The worst tornado in human history happened in 1979 a F5 tornado formed in Illinois and went through Indiana to ohio and killed 1,300 people and injured 12,000, it lasted four 15 hours and had wind up to 378 mph. tornadoes are very ! Tornadoes interesting and can happen with new anywhere and can technology we can be very be able to save unpredictable. At lives and learn least 1,000 more about tornadoes happen tornadoes. in the U.S everywhere. Most tornadoes only last a few minutes and even tho they don’t last that long they can destroy allot. We scale them with the Fscale, that measures how much damage a tornado destroys the scale goes through 1-5 f1,f2,and f3 are the most common. Most of the time people only have minutes or even seconds to find a safe place to hid. Also what the
Monsoons/Blizzards
By: Jacob Perriera
Monsoons
! It was a warm and sunny day in July. My family was visiting Mexico. It was me, my two brothers, one sister, my mom, and my step-dad. We had a hotel that we were living in, and we went down to the beach. After about two hours, we were about to head back to the hotel when my step-dad, pointed out the sky. It was dark and cloudy. We checked the time and it was only 3:00 P.M. So the time, had nothing to do with why the sky was so menacingly dark. My brother, had said “I think it’s a monsoon.” We all believed him, as he recently did a project on monsoons for school, and knew quite a lot about them. The rain started falling slightly. My brother had said that “Monsoon season for the southwestern areas of the U.S, such as Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado,
West Texas and California is around May.” We got in the car and sped off for the hotel. ! ! We got to the hotel and got out of the car. We gazed up at the sky and saw that it has not changed much from what it looked like when we were at the beach. We rushed inside and there were people, sitting and standing around in the front lobby. The manager was giving some directions. He started talking about some facts about monsoons, to calm the people down a bit. He had first explained that “a monsoon is when it rains indefinitely for several days.” He told us to “stay calm, and don’t panic.” He said that “monsoons only occur in tropical climates, and when the temperature is 18 C or under.” He told everyone that the safest place to be is in a building, and at least 6
miles away from the lightning, that a monsoon brings. We held out for the few days that the monsoon had lasted, and soon left for home.
Monsoons/Blizzard
By: Jacob Perriera
Blizzards
! Me and my family were living in Australia, and the it was a dark and cold day. We were driving back to our house from a restaurant we went to, and it started snowing. We thought it was weird for it to be snowing in Australia, but then we remembered that blizzards are not common in Australia, but they do occur sometimes in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales and Victoria. When Blizzards occur, they can affect Tasmanian Highlands and Mount Wellington. Which is the area we were living in. We drove faster and soon got to a road block, there were police officers around. They told us to hurry somewhere safe, because the winds from the blizzards were too high, and were getting up to 45 miles per hour. We kept going and found a place for people to go to if they live to close to the start of the blizzard. ! !
! We walked inside, and they were giving everyone some safety precautions, we all sat in a line next to each other one by one. Listening for the storm to stop. We were all worried that it would not stop all day. After six hours of waiting for it to stop the winds died and you couldn’t hear a thing. Everyone was silent. A man in the front of the line stood and opened the door. The blizzard was over! Now on we will always be prepared for weather disasters.
Indiana Weather
By: Nathan Brill
! I was outside hanging with a friend when it started to pour. We ran inside to take shelter from the rain. When we got inside we heard my dad’s TV. It said, “After today the rain average will have doubled from forty inches.” We went on the computer after that to learn more about Indiana's weather. We learned that Indiana’s average temperatures are 19 degrees F to 86 degrees F. We also were educated in the fact that Indiana’s summer temperatures range from 70 degrees F to 90 degrees and the winter
temperatures range from 25 degrees F to 35 degrees F.
brings the cold temperatures. We found out about the Lake Effect Snow. The ! We learned so Lake Effect Snow in much that day we Indiana is basically looked up anything we cold air that moves could about Indiana's over a warmer body of weather. We found out water and because of Indiana’s weather this clouds form over consist of rain, sleet, the lake and then hail, thunder, lightning, cause a snow fall. Now snow, and tornados. I am prepared for all Our temperatures kinds of Indiana come from the Jet weather. Stream. The Jet Stream flows between a cold air mass and a warm air mass. In the summer the Jet Stream angles up so the warm air mass brings warm temperatures. In the winter the Jet Stream angles down and