Natural Disasters

1. Natural Disasters By Livy Ashburne, Sherry Gilronan, and Liv Markham

2. What are blizzards? • Blizzards are large amounts of falling or blowing snow with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of less than ¼ mile for at least 3 hours • Heavy snowfalls and cold temperatures often accompany a blizzard, but are not required. • “Blizzard Warning” or “Winter Storm Watch”

3. DANGER • Whiteouts • Wind chill factor  makes it feel even colder • Hypothermia/frostbite possible • Heavy snow can accumulate on telephone lines and bring them down • Power outages

4. How Blizzards Happen • Needs below freezing temperatures in clouds and near the ground, moisture to form precipitation (wind blowing over lake or ocean), and lift (warm air colliding with cold and forcing the cold air to rise).

5. Blizzard Safety Tips: • Do not eat snow—it lowers your body temperature • Cover all exposed parts of your body • Build a snow cave if you need shelter • Keep blood circulating by exercising fingers, toes, feet, arms • Be prepared with extra food, water, a radio, a flashlight with extra batteries, a heating source, and a first aid kit • Wear loose-fitting, lightweight clothing in several layers and a hat—half your body heat can be lost from your head

7. Global Warming & Blizzards • Global warming would cause fewer but more severe blizzards • Greater frequency of severe storms and extreme weather events, including blizzards and hurricanes • Temperature must be near or below 10° Fahrenheit

8. Tornados • Where are tornados normally? They are normally in Minnesota, Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas. http://www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_climatology.html

9. How do tornados form • There is air that rises from the ground into the bottom of the thunderstorm cloud. • The wind speeds and wind directions can cause the rising air to rotate vertically and this creates a vortex • Sometimes the tornadoes develop in the cloud base to the ground. • http://www.educypedia.be/education/climateanimations.htm • The picture website http://www.mesoscale.ws/pic2004/040612-17.jpg

10. Safety Tips • When you are out doors some safety tips are to find shelter and never stay in your car. Use your arms to protect your head and neck on the ground. • When you are at a house and a tornado is happening the safest place to be is in the basement. If you have a concrete shelter in your house that would be the first place you would go.

11. Safety tips continued • One place you don’t go when a tornado is underneath a bridge • A good website to see what happens is http://www.usatoday.com/weather/graphics/tornadoes/flash.htm

12. Climate • Scientists are not 100% sure but they think global warming increases the chances of tornados. • http://www.tornadochaser.net/globalwarming.html

13. Hurricanes • http://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/visualizations/es2008/es2008page01.cfm?chapter_no=visualization • Hurricanes are large tropical storms with heavy winds • Hurricanes rotate in a counter-clockwise direction around an "eye” • Hurricanes begin as tropical storms over the warm moist waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans near the equator • The eye is the calmest part of the Hurricane • Once the winds reach 74 miles ph its clarified as a Hurricane

14. How Climate affects Hurricanes • No one is really sure what is going to happen when the climate goes up, but people estimate that global warming may cause Hurricanes to become worse • There would also be a higher risk of flooding because the glaciers are melting • They think that there may be a great risk of more Hurricanes of the climate goes up if the climate goes down it would not be able to form because Hurricanes need a warm moist water

15. Typhoons • A violent cyclone that occurs in the northwest Pacific Ocean • Inside a typhoon, strong winds blow around an area of low pressure at the storm's center, called the eye • Form over warm water • Typhoons rotate in the opposite direction that Hurricanes do • http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4183344.stm

16. What is the difference between Hurricanes and Typhoons? • Typhoons generally tend to be stronger than hurricanes • In the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean its called Hurricanes. • But once you get to the Western Pacific Ocean, its called typhoons. • Both are huge thunderstorms with lots of wind • Both Spin wind

17. Other useful websites • http://esminfo.prenhall.com/science/geoanimations/animations/Tornadoes.html • http://www.tornadochaser.net/globalwarming.html

18. Websites Used… • http://www.ussartf.org/blizzards.htm • http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=79 • http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-67662856.html • http://www.weather.com/glossary/b.html • http:\answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200811004090554AANJzw • http:/www.fema.gov/kids/hurr.htm • http:/www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/sevweath/swhoware.html • http:/www.educypedia.be/education/climateanimations.htm • http://www.educypedia.be/education/climateanimations.htmhttp:// • www.usatoday.com/weather/graphics/tornadoes/flash.htm • http://www.tornadochaser.net/globalwarming.html