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How Hurricanes Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: you Should Read books dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
1:01
Speaker 1: Should know a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
1:10
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
1:13
Speaker 1: Charles w. Chuck Bryan over there. Jerry's around here somewhere.
1:17
Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know everybody. The Wrath
1:23
Speaker 1: of God Edition. Hi. Hi, I've been singing that Bob
1:29
Speaker 1: Dylan song all day. Oh yeah, you know it's weird.
1:33
Speaker 1: I have two and I hadn't realized it until you
1:36
Speaker 1: just said that. Really, Yeah, my brain is left. Which
1:42
Speaker 1: song hard Rain is Gonna fall? Her? Yeah? Hurricane Hurricane,
1:46
Speaker 1: hard Rain is gonna fall? Are you crazy? I guess
1:49
Speaker 1: it would. It hadn't even occurred to me. Great song Hurricane.
1:53
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to be singing hard Grain is Gonna Fall,
1:55
Speaker 1: which is not nearly as good as the Hurricane song.
1:57
Speaker 1: I'm surprised. You know any Bob One song that's shocking?
2:01
Speaker 1: Those are the two? No more than that? No, that's it. Oh,
2:07
Speaker 1: I know that one that goes d what's that one? Oh?
2:13
Speaker 1: It's all of them? Gotcha? God bless him. He's got
2:16
Speaker 1: a new album ount It's great, dude. How many does
2:18
Speaker 1: that make? M hmm. He's got a lot of records. Well,
2:22
Speaker 1: God's great song it is. It was a good movie too,
2:26
Speaker 1: sad I didn't see that. Yeah, Denzel Washington, I believe
2:30
Speaker 1: played him, And yes, it's I mean, if you like Injustice,
2:34
Speaker 1: you're gonna love that movie. You mean, if you like
2:37
Speaker 1: movies about fighting injustice, just what you mean? Right, Either way,
2:42
Speaker 1: you're gonna like the movie. I love Injustice. Sadly, there
2:47
Speaker 1: are people who say things like that these days. That's true. So, um, Chuck,
2:52
Speaker 1: we're talking about hurricanes, not the Bob Dylan song, but
2:54
Speaker 1: about the actual like weather system, weather disaster, and not
3:00
Speaker 1: only I guess you mean typhoons. Uh no, I mean hurricanes,
3:04
Speaker 1: but that's the same thing, and so is Chuck, you
3:07
Speaker 1: mean cyclones? Kind of yes, all three of those are
3:10
Speaker 1: this one and the same. Did you know that? You know?
3:13
Speaker 1: I think I knew that and just sort of forgot
3:16
Speaker 1: because when I read it, I was like, oh, yeah,
3:18
Speaker 1: I think I knew that, right, So, I mean, it
3:21
Speaker 1: just depends on where they occur in the world. Basically
3:25
Speaker 1: that there's I mean, aside aside from exactly you know, um,
3:30
Speaker 1: where they occur, where they make land, and then the
3:32
Speaker 1: way that they turn and move. They are the same thing.
3:35
Speaker 1: They start the same way. They're the same uh group
3:39
Speaker 1: of of weird you know, weather coincidences that happen to
3:43
Speaker 1: assemble into something. And um, hurricanes to me are as
3:46
Speaker 1: good as it gets natural disaster wise. I mean, they
3:49
Speaker 1: are as interesting as they come. They are so ridiculously
3:54
Speaker 1: destructive and then theoretically what they could do if they
3:58
Speaker 1: got even worse, which they may. Um, It's it just
4:01
Speaker 1: boggles the mind. I'm a hurricane fan in a way,
4:04
Speaker 1: but I hate Miami U as far as their university
4:07
Speaker 1: is concerned. Uh you hate the you No, not really,
4:13
Speaker 1: I'm just teasing. Yeah, And I think the other thing
4:16
Speaker 1: about hurricanes is so fascinating is it's, um, it's a
4:19
Speaker 1: regular thing. It's not like a volcanic eruption or a tsunami, uh,
4:25
Speaker 1: you know, or an earthquake. It's you know, every year
4:28
Speaker 1: they're gonna be you know, uh, like a hundred tropical
4:33
Speaker 1: storms and you know thirty to fifty of these are
4:37
Speaker 1: going to develop into hurricanes. You can count on it,
4:39
Speaker 1: right Jack. Yeah. And they actually they have seasons, to
4:42
Speaker 1: tell you the truth, They're depending on where you are
4:44
Speaker 1: in the world and the um northern hemisphere, especially in
4:47
Speaker 1: the Atlantic You've got what's appropriately called the Atlantic hurricane
4:51
Speaker 1: season and it runs from about June one to November UM.
4:55
Speaker 1: Down Under in the Southern Hemisphere, they have a hurricane
4:59
Speaker 1: season that runs from about January to March UM. And again,
5:05
Speaker 1: like there's some differences to them, but that's it's essentially
5:08
Speaker 1: the same thing. It's just that hurricanes tend to form
5:12
Speaker 1: over the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific um, and then
5:16
Speaker 1: cyclones are over the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean,
5:20
Speaker 1: and then typhoons tend to hit the northwest Pacific Ocean
5:23
Speaker 1: around Asia to the Middle East. That's right. So I
5:27
Speaker 1: think the Australians would call them cyclones, is that right? Uh?
5:32
Speaker 1: And we call them good old hurricanes, that's right. And
5:34
Speaker 1: actually hurricane, which since we're just spouting out facts about
5:38
Speaker 1: hurricanes at this point right now, it actually comes from
5:41
Speaker 1: an old um Mayan word hurrican, which is the name
5:45
Speaker 1: for one of their gods of destruction of thunder and
5:48
Speaker 1: lightning and wind. And I believe maybe rain who brought
5:53
Speaker 1: the flood that destroyed almost all people and then made
5:57
Speaker 1: it recede because humanity out in too wicked. And if
6:01
Speaker 1: that sounds familiar, that's because there's a flood story and
6:04
Speaker 1: basically every culture in the world, which makes me really wonder, like,
6:08
Speaker 1: what happened? What is everybody talking about that actually may
6:12
Speaker 1: have happened at some point. I just find that fascinating. Yeah,
6:16
Speaker 1: and how hurricane forms can get very convoluted, as we
6:19
Speaker 1: realized when we UH started diving into this research. And
6:25
Speaker 1: we'll describe it in a bit more detail, but you
6:27
Speaker 1: know me and my Earth Science for kids websites door UH.
6:33
Speaker 1: In the very simplest of terms, hurricanes form over warm
6:37
Speaker 1: ocean waters near the equator and the tropics, and that
6:41
Speaker 1: warm moist air rises up and then is replaced by
6:44
Speaker 1: cooler air, and then that air warms up and starts
6:47
Speaker 1: to rise, and that just causess this cycle that starts
6:50
Speaker 1: these clouds to form, and they start rotating and they
6:54
Speaker 1: get a little more organized, and if there's enough of
6:56
Speaker 1: that warm water, eventually that wind is gonna pick up
6:59
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get a hurricane, and they move in
7:03
Speaker 1: the northern hemisphere, especially in the Atlantic um which we're
7:06
Speaker 1: going to kind of focus on Atlantic hurricanes here, but again,
7:10
Speaker 1: most of the souf we're talking about applies to cyclones
7:13
Speaker 1: and typhoons too, but in the Atlantic in particular, they
7:16
Speaker 1: usually start off the west coast of Africa and move
7:20
Speaker 1: down towards the equator where they slide over through the
7:23
Speaker 1: Caribbean and then up along Florida, the Carolinas, um sometimes
7:28
Speaker 1: to New England, but most of the time they'll hit
7:30
Speaker 1: the the Gulf Stream and will be carried up to
7:35
Speaker 1: England where they peeter out and show up for a
7:39
Speaker 1: pine at the pub. Yeah. And you know, hurricanes will
7:43
Speaker 1: they eventually will die out. Um. Landfall will make them
7:49
Speaker 1: die out, because like that's the worst part for the people,
7:52
Speaker 1: you know, living on planet Earth, because that's where it
7:54
Speaker 1: hits the land. But that actually means the hurricane is
7:56
Speaker 1: dying because there's not that warm water anymore. Um. Or
8:00
Speaker 1: the further north they go, the cooler that water gets,
8:03
Speaker 1: and that'll just peter her it out as well. Yeah,
8:05
Speaker 1: which I mean, if you really think about it, when
8:08
Speaker 1: you take all these factors into consideration, just those two
8:11
Speaker 1: that it needs warm water and um that it can't
8:14
Speaker 1: be over land like a hurricane. Is a startling series
8:18
Speaker 1: of coincidences that happen like again and again repeatedly during
8:22
Speaker 1: a certain section of the year in certain sections of
8:25
Speaker 1: the world, and they it just takes everything being perfect,
8:30
Speaker 1: like a perfect storm, but over and over again for
8:33
Speaker 1: these things to happen. And like you said, you know,
8:35
Speaker 1: there's so many different storms that form off the west
8:38
Speaker 1: coast of Africa or off the uh the yeah, or
8:42
Speaker 1: off the west coast of Australia, um, that can form
8:46
Speaker 1: into these things, but they don't. They usually don't because
8:50
Speaker 1: all of those factors just aren't working just perfectly for
8:55
Speaker 1: the thing did not only kind of catch to ignite
8:58
Speaker 1: in a way, um, but also to on of developed
9:00
Speaker 1: steam and to really pick up and become a problem. Yeah.
9:04
Speaker 1: And I know what you mean about loving hurricanes in
9:07
Speaker 1: a certain weird way. Um. Obviously, the landfall and just
9:11
Speaker 1: the destruction is terrible and we don't wish that ever.
9:15
Speaker 1: But when you see those images from above of the
9:19
Speaker 1: hurricane rotating and how big it is, it's just it's
9:24
Speaker 1: humbling and just sort of mind boggling display of nature
9:28
Speaker 1: at work. You know. It is that I mean that
9:31
Speaker 1: that hits it on the head. It's definitely not all
9:33
Speaker 1: the death and property destructs that I'm a fan of. No,
9:36
Speaker 1: of course, I'm like, man, I love injustice. I know, man,
9:41
Speaker 1: this is what happened to you overnight. So um so,
9:44
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about this. Let's talk about how hurricane
9:47
Speaker 1: actually forms and then what it forms into. Okay, we're
9:50
Speaker 1: gonna do the Earth sign. Okay, I'll take over everybody.
9:54
Speaker 1: I hope you like my voice because that's all you're
9:55
Speaker 1: gonna hear for a little while. I think it's the
9:58
Speaker 1: listening they're probably you to that. Um do you know
10:01
Speaker 1: when we first started this, I couldn't stand my voice,
10:04
Speaker 1: couldn't stand it. Y. Yeah, I finally reached I reached
10:08
Speaker 1: the day tent with it. I just ignore it. Um So, chuck,
10:15
Speaker 1: You've got air, right air over the ocean and over
10:21
Speaker 1: the land. The stuff that's closest to the surface is
10:23
Speaker 1: actually the warmest, which, as you know, like if you've
10:25
Speaker 1: ever been skydiving, is really cold up there. I haven't. No,
10:29
Speaker 1: it's really cold up there, trust me. Um. And when
10:32
Speaker 1: you um or like if you're ever like if you
10:36
Speaker 1: climb a mountain or something, it's always cold up there.
10:38
Speaker 1: And one reason why is because I've never done it.
10:40
Speaker 1: The just trust me, trust me. The upstairs of my
10:45
Speaker 1: house is cooler, and it shouldn't be. It should be
10:48
Speaker 1: much warmer because heat rises in your house. Yeah, but
10:52
Speaker 1: the a C up there, there's fewer rooms. It just
10:53
Speaker 1: really Okay, you're making this our science thing way hard.
10:58
Speaker 1: So the air at the surface of the Earth is
11:02
Speaker 1: warmer because it gets warm by the Earth or by
11:04
Speaker 1: the ocean, right open. Ocean temperatures kind of tend to
11:07
Speaker 1: warm with the seasons, and so by around June one,
11:11
Speaker 1: which was when hurricane season starts, you've got an ocean
11:15
Speaker 1: which with surface temperatures hovering around Sevenday nine to eighty
11:18
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. Okay, Yeah, And I think eighty is where
11:21
Speaker 1: you've got to be kind of that's the threshold to
11:24
Speaker 1: even get if you want to talk about hurricanes, it's
11:27
Speaker 1: got to go to eighty degrees exactly, and not just
11:29
Speaker 1: at the very surface. I think it needs to be
11:31
Speaker 1: that down to about a hundred and fifty feet because
11:34
Speaker 1: hurricanes mixes a lot of water together, and if it's
11:37
Speaker 1: not warm water that stays available, it's not it's just
11:40
Speaker 1: gonna peeter out right. So you need eighty degree at
11:43
Speaker 1: a minimum um surface temperature water down to a hundred
11:47
Speaker 1: and fifty feet and so um, you've got that going
11:51
Speaker 1: on in the ocean around certain times a year, and
11:54
Speaker 1: if we can travel into the interior of Africa all
11:56
Speaker 1: the way to Sudan, a little monarch butterfly will flap
11:59
Speaker 1: its wings and that creates an air disturbance, and weeks
12:03
Speaker 1: later that develops into an even bigger disturbance, and it
12:06
Speaker 1: moves further west across Africa and finally off the coast,
12:10
Speaker 1: and it will encounter that warm water and warm air
12:13
Speaker 1: that's that's being heated by the water, and that disturbance
12:17
Speaker 1: will actually encounter that water that's evaporating and rising. And
12:21
Speaker 1: as that water evaporates and rises, um, it's becoming less dense. Right,
12:26
Speaker 1: the molecules that make up that air with the water
12:29
Speaker 1: vapor are further apart then cold are that's above it. Well,
12:33
Speaker 1: nature of abhoors a vacuum, right, and when the air
12:37
Speaker 1: leaves that area right above the surface of the ocean,
12:41
Speaker 1: cold are starts to move in below it, right, which
12:44
Speaker 1: pushes the other air further upward. But then that cold
12:47
Speaker 1: air is warmed up too, and that starts to rise.
12:50
Speaker 1: And so what you have under this disturbance in the
12:53
Speaker 1: air that was created by a butterfly's wings in Sudan
12:57
Speaker 1: is this this motion in the ocean. That's all that
13:03
Speaker 1: that that is kind of this upward trajectory of air
13:06
Speaker 1: constantly moving upward, and it's full of water vapors. So
13:10
Speaker 1: it's when it gets high enough up into the cooler
13:13
Speaker 1: regions in the atmosphere, it condenses and forms clouds, and
13:17
Speaker 1: those clouds eventually start to rain, and as it condenses
13:21
Speaker 1: and starts to rain, that actually heats up that area.
13:24
Speaker 1: The latent heat of condensation heats up that area. So
13:27
Speaker 1: now you have this column of warm moist air rising up,
13:32
Speaker 1: moving with coal. They're trying to come in and replace it.
13:35
Speaker 1: As the warm air moves, and you have a lot
13:37
Speaker 1: of air movement, you have some storm starting, and you
13:40
Speaker 1: have all the ingredients now for what could become a hurricane.
13:46
Speaker 1: That's right, and uh that that heat exchange is going on,
13:50
Speaker 1: and that's going to create a lot of wind and
13:52
Speaker 1: that's just gonna make everything worse because those winds converge
13:56
Speaker 1: at the surface and they're colliding with each other, and
13:58
Speaker 1: that's pushing that warm moist air up and up, and
14:01
Speaker 1: that cycle just starts to happen. That rotational cycle that's
14:05
Speaker 1: so tied to, like the image of a hurricane, and uh,
14:10
Speaker 1: those winds get involved and everything kind of everything kind
14:13
Speaker 1: of just synchronizes, right exactly. I mean, like that's what
14:16
Speaker 1: I'm talking about with all the different coincidences that have
14:19
Speaker 1: to number one, be present, then have to work just right,
14:22
Speaker 1: because if that wind that's converging at the surface to
14:26
Speaker 1: replace that warm moist air that's rising. Um Man, I've
14:29
Speaker 1: never said moist this many times in my life and
14:31
Speaker 1: been okay with it, but I'm I'm all right, so far,
14:33
Speaker 1: how are you doing? Okay? Um, If the speed of
14:38
Speaker 1: that wind that's coming in at the surface is different
14:42
Speaker 1: than say, like the speed of that you know higher
14:44
Speaker 1: up in that column, you're gonna have what's called wind shear,
14:47
Speaker 1: and it's going to keep the storm from being organized
14:50
Speaker 1: into a cohesive hole. So just that factor alone that
14:53
Speaker 1: somehow the winds at different levels of this storm that's
14:56
Speaker 1: starting to organize have to be moving at roughly the
14:59
Speaker 1: same speed. That's a big one, right, Um. And then
15:03
Speaker 1: because of these these thunderstorms that are are are starting
15:07
Speaker 1: and the more condensation that's um that they're heating more
15:10
Speaker 1: and more, so they're creating more and more storms. So
15:13
Speaker 1: you've got all these storms that are kind of starting
15:15
Speaker 1: around this area, and they start to get organized together,
15:19
Speaker 1: and then this is this. Eventually, this is called a
15:21
Speaker 1: tropical depression. And eventually, if all, if everything that we're
15:25
Speaker 1: gonna keep talking about happens just precisely right, is going
15:29
Speaker 1: to organize into a tropical storm and then a hurricane.
15:32
Speaker 1: And then the hurricane, as we'll see, goes through different
15:35
Speaker 1: stages of categorization. And all has to do with the
15:37
Speaker 1: speed of those winds that have now kind of organized
15:40
Speaker 1: into this rotational monster, which is really a tight or
15:45
Speaker 1: sometimes a loose collection of storms that form one big storm.
15:50
Speaker 1: That's what a hurricane is, that are all kind of
15:53
Speaker 1: moving in the same direction at about the same speed.
15:56
Speaker 1: And it all has to do with that that thing
15:59
Speaker 1: that started all this, that rising moist air in that
16:01
Speaker 1: one spot. Because as these different storms assemble into a larger,
16:07
Speaker 1: more cohesive hole, the center, the lowest pressure center, right
16:12
Speaker 1: where there's the most the warmest, moistest air is rising up.
16:19
Speaker 1: Um it also has the lowest pressure, and because nature
16:21
Speaker 1: abhors a vacuum, higher pressure air is trying to come
16:24
Speaker 1: in to fill it. But there's something that um we
16:28
Speaker 1: have to talk about called the Coriolis effect, and here's
16:31
Speaker 1: where things really run off the rails for us ticket chuck. Yeah.
16:36
Speaker 1: The Coriolis effect is when you see that hurricane rotating,
16:41
Speaker 1: that's a byproduct or I guess the product of that
16:43
Speaker 1: Coriolis force, which is we've talked about it before, but
16:47
Speaker 1: it's the natural phenomenon that makes fluids in any kind
16:50
Speaker 1: of free moving object either go to the right of
16:53
Speaker 1: their destination if you're in the Northern hemisphere, or to
16:56
Speaker 1: the left in the Southern hemisphere. Uh, not toilets in Australia.
17:02
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought we said that. Okay, so I
17:04
Speaker 1: thought I said it wasn't true, and somebody showed us
17:07
Speaker 1: that it was. It was the opposite. Yeah, I think
17:10
Speaker 1: it's not true. Well we'll find out again. But at
17:13
Speaker 1: any rate, in the Northern hemisphere, your winds deflect to
17:16
Speaker 1: the right. In the Southern Hemisphere, they're going to deflect
17:19
Speaker 1: to the left. And this that deflection that gets the
17:23
Speaker 1: storm spinning. And that's why you get different rotations in
17:27
Speaker 1: each hemisphere. They rotate counterclockwise here in the Northern hemisphere
17:31
Speaker 1: and clockwise in the Southern hemisphere. Right, But we do
17:34
Speaker 1: need to keep going with the Coriolis effect. Sorry, I
17:37
Speaker 1: didn't mean to scare everybody, but the Coriolis effect does
17:40
Speaker 1: two things. It makes the hurricane rotate like you were saying,
17:45
Speaker 1: basically on an axis around that lowest pressure center. And
17:48
Speaker 1: then it also moves the hurricane physically itself as it
17:52
Speaker 1: kind of travels southward from West Africa towards the equator,
17:56
Speaker 1: which is really bizarre because at the equator the Coriolis
18:00
Speaker 1: effect is at its absolute weakest. It's strongest at the polls.
18:05
Speaker 1: But for some reason, something about the Coriolis effect moves
18:09
Speaker 1: the hurricane like a hurricane could theoretically cross the equator
18:13
Speaker 1: from the northern hemisphere to the southern. Who knows what
18:15
Speaker 1: would happen when it and when it transferred over to
18:18
Speaker 1: the other like the opposite Coriolis effect. As far as
18:22
Speaker 1: we know, probably as far as we know, it's never happened.
18:26
Speaker 1: But we've only been keeping track of this stuff for
18:28
Speaker 1: about a hundred years, but it just doesn't ever seem
18:31
Speaker 1: to happen. For some reason, the Corioles effect, despite being
18:34
Speaker 1: weakest that the equator, moves hurricanes back upward over and
18:38
Speaker 1: up back into the left right. So the Coriolis effect
18:43
Speaker 1: us two very important things for hurricanes, but probably the
18:46
Speaker 1: biggest one, the most important one as far as the
18:48
Speaker 1: hurricane itself is concerned, is to keep that thing spinning
18:51
Speaker 1: around in the same motion, clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on
18:55
Speaker 1: your hemisphere. All right, I think we should take a
18:58
Speaker 1: break and we can come back and talk a little
19:00
Speaker 1: bit about what these different categories mean right after this, So, so, Chuck,
19:30
Speaker 1: before we talk categories, I have to pop one more
19:33
Speaker 1: thing in about the coreoles. It's important, you're ready, sure,
19:38
Speaker 1: So that lowest pressure center, what's called the eye m
19:43
Speaker 1: that is actually um. It's the clearest part of the hurricane.
19:47
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's clear skies, um beautiful, eerily calm. And the
19:52
Speaker 1: reason why is because of the Coriolis effect, the lowest
19:57
Speaker 1: pressure center is never overwhelmed by the higher pressure air
20:02
Speaker 1: that's trying to get in. The whole reason that hurricane
20:05
Speaker 1: spins around the center is because all that wind from
20:09
Speaker 1: sometimes hundreds of miles away is traveling to that center
20:13
Speaker 1: trying to fill it, but the Coriolis effect deflects it.
20:16
Speaker 1: They end up going around that center the winds and
20:20
Speaker 1: then up so lifting more warm air up, and they
20:23
Speaker 1: never make it to that middle which is what causes that.
20:26
Speaker 1: And the stronger the winds, meaning the stronger the pressure
20:29
Speaker 1: gradient between the center of the the hurricane and the
20:33
Speaker 1: outer bands beyond the eyewall, the stronger the difference between
20:37
Speaker 1: that gradient, the stronger the hurricane is going to be
20:39
Speaker 1: because the stronger the winds are gonna be trying to
20:41
Speaker 1: fill that low pressure void. That's what causes hurricanes to
20:45
Speaker 1: spin around clockwise or counterclockwise. That is absolutely fascinating to me.
20:51
Speaker 1: It's very cool either storm commest place in the world.
20:54
Speaker 1: It really is, although it's counterintuitive. It is. So the
21:00
Speaker 1: categories category one and this is all broken down and
21:05
Speaker 1: very sort of uh. I mean there's there's really there's.
21:10
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty stiff as as far as how they categorize.
21:13
Speaker 1: He's saying, right, it's not willy nilly. They don't say
21:16
Speaker 1: like this. It's getting pretty bad. I think it's a two.
21:19
Speaker 1: Actually measure things and there are demarcation lines by usually
21:25
Speaker 1: wind speeds is one of the big parts. Um is
21:30
Speaker 1: a category one and that's gonna you know, I could
21:34
Speaker 1: blow a tree branch into your roof or or get
21:37
Speaker 1: some shingles shuttering. You might have to get out the pruners.
21:42
Speaker 1: Category two is ten miles per hour. That's getting pretty
21:47
Speaker 1: dangerous and you're gonna get some pretty extensive damage at
21:50
Speaker 1: this point. Um Like you know, the siding of your house,
21:54
Speaker 1: the frame of your house. Shallow trees can be snapped
21:58
Speaker 1: or uprooted. At this point, you're probably gonna get some
22:01
Speaker 1: power loss. Number three is a major hurricane. Category three
22:07
Speaker 1: is at one eleven hundred twenty nine miles and they
22:10
Speaker 1: rank this as devastating damage and you know, lots of
22:14
Speaker 1: trees uprooted. You definitely will lose probably power and water
22:18
Speaker 1: for a period of time for the category three. And
22:22
Speaker 1: then you've got your category four, which is a hundred
22:24
Speaker 1: and thirty to a hundred and fifty six. Category five
22:29
Speaker 1: is hundred and fifty seven. Are higher. You're probably not
22:31
Speaker 1: gonna see many Cat fives, but the Cat four is
22:34
Speaker 1: pretty catastrophic, and those are the ones that we've seen
22:37
Speaker 1: more and more of in more recent years. Category fives
22:42
Speaker 1: are just, yeah, that's extreme catastrophe there monsters monsters. So
22:50
Speaker 1: category four and five, there's not a tremendous amount of
22:53
Speaker 1: differences of both, like you said, considered catastrophic um damage
22:57
Speaker 1: causing hurricanes, But I get the impression that the difference
23:01
Speaker 1: between four and five and really like real life is substantial.
23:05
Speaker 1: But either way, they're gonna like leave so many trees
23:08
Speaker 1: and power lines down that you're this that whatever area
23:11
Speaker 1: gets hit substantially by one of those UM category four
23:15
Speaker 1: or five are going to basically be isolated both without
23:18
Speaker 1: power but also um the roads are going to be
23:21
Speaker 1: made impassable. And sometimes you can be stuck in the
23:24
Speaker 1: midst of this for weeks before you can can be
23:27
Speaker 1: reached again. The destruction can be so bad from them. Yeah,
23:31
Speaker 1: and you know, if you're are a coastal liver, um,
23:35
Speaker 1: this is a part of your life. Every year hurricane
23:38
Speaker 1: season is a big deal. You've got your your house
23:42
Speaker 1: retrofitted ideally at this point, I think like almost any
23:45
Speaker 1: coastal house these days is on stilts. If it's you know,
23:49
Speaker 1: built in the last twenty plus years, well, not just that,
23:52
Speaker 1: I think after two thousand five, I want to say
23:54
Speaker 1: it was Hurricane Andrew um Florida in particular, past new
23:58
Speaker 1: building codes that I like, if you put a roof on,
24:02
Speaker 1: it has to have like this kind of joist and
24:05
Speaker 1: um Like whatever windows are put in have to be
24:08
Speaker 1: like wind proof. Up to thirty miles. Probably they've definitely
24:12
Speaker 1: like started to take that seriously because so many people
24:15
Speaker 1: were dying before, but also because of the billions and
24:18
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of property damage that would happen every year. Yeah,
24:22
Speaker 1: I mean here in Atlanta, obviously we don't get hurricanes.
24:25
Speaker 1: Coastal Georgia, we certainly do, but we do get the
24:28
Speaker 1: outer bands of the hurricane, and we can get some
24:31
Speaker 1: really bad wind and rain and some flooding and stuff
24:34
Speaker 1: like that. But we're obviously far enough inland to where
24:37
Speaker 1: the eye of the hurricane is not going to really
24:40
Speaker 1: affect us. But if you're in the Gulf or along
24:43
Speaker 1: the Florida or South Carolina, North Carolina up into Virginia
24:47
Speaker 1: even um, and then you know, like you said, they
24:50
Speaker 1: can go higher Maryland and New England, but in even
24:54
Speaker 1: New York City. But generally I think like kind of
24:57
Speaker 1: from Virginia down is where you're gonna be the most
25:00
Speaker 1: worried in hurricane season. So um, you know, you mean,
25:05
Speaker 1: And I have a place in Florida, right and we
25:07
Speaker 1: were down there once and I think it was Hurricane
25:10
Speaker 1: Michael a year or so ago, came through and we
25:14
Speaker 1: got out of there and came up to Atlanta, and
25:17
Speaker 1: that thing followed us all the way up to Atlanta
25:20
Speaker 1: and knocked the power out. We're at our place. There
25:25
Speaker 1: was that a shaggy dog story. Do you know what
25:29
Speaker 1: a shaggy dog story is? A story that seems um
25:33
Speaker 1: uh worthwhile or worth saying to the person saying it,
25:36
Speaker 1: but not to anybody else. Oh, I don't think so.
25:39
Speaker 1: And why did they call it a shaggy dogs? I
25:41
Speaker 1: have no idea. We need to get to the bottom
25:42
Speaker 1: of that someday. No, I think it's a great story. Um.
25:47
Speaker 1: And I remember when that happened. In fact, you do. Wow.
25:51
Speaker 1: I love it when my life is part of your life.
25:55
Speaker 1: I know it's like happens to it three times a
25:57
Speaker 1: year and every Tuesday, that's right. Uh, yeah, I totally
26:02
Speaker 1: remember that. And you've also, um, you know, like any
26:05
Speaker 1: good coastal liver, you've got hurricane shutters and stuff like that, right, No, yeah,
26:10
Speaker 1: for sure, and like the high impact windows and all
26:12
Speaker 1: that stuff. Yeah, you just gotta do that stuff these days. Oh,
26:15
Speaker 1: you definitely do. And it's like really kind of scary
26:18
Speaker 1: if you're out there not like that, you know, because
26:21
Speaker 1: there was two thousand five when they passed that building.
26:23
Speaker 1: CA There's a lot of places that haven't been retrofit,
26:25
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like the whole community kind of
26:27
Speaker 1: comes together to take care of everybody who who needs
26:30
Speaker 1: help around that time, which is pretty cool. But one
26:32
Speaker 1: of the reasons why everybody has, you know, days to
26:36
Speaker 1: prepare for this kind of thing and go to the
26:38
Speaker 1: store and buy every banana you can get your hands
26:40
Speaker 1: on and like five loaves of bread and all that
26:43
Speaker 1: um and put up sandbags and stuff is because of
26:45
Speaker 1: the modeling and um forecasting that has has been developed
26:50
Speaker 1: in the last I don't know, fifty sixty years UM.
26:54
Speaker 1: That's really saved a lot of people's lives because we
26:58
Speaker 1: didn't have warnings before. It was just the sky started
27:01
Speaker 1: to look pretty bad and you know, an hour or
27:04
Speaker 1: two later your town was gone. Yeah, and it's you know,
27:08
Speaker 1: I rent the beach house on Isle of Palms every
27:11
Speaker 1: usually in all those houses are you know, fifteen feet
27:15
Speaker 1: off the ground on those on those legs, And it's
27:18
Speaker 1: just crazy to me to think about the old days
27:20
Speaker 1: when you would just have a house sitting on the
27:22
Speaker 1: sand like seventy five ft from the from high time.
27:26
Speaker 1: This is such a bad idea. Because such a bad idea.
27:29
Speaker 1: One of the things, one of the big problems that
27:31
Speaker 1: make hurricanes so destructive, Chuck, is that not only um
27:35
Speaker 1: is it the wind that can come through, and you know,
27:38
Speaker 1: once it reaches I think like a category three, four
27:42
Speaker 1: or five, you're that's when you're gonna start to lose
27:44
Speaker 1: your deck. Um not just your decks are your roof
27:47
Speaker 1: decking is really what I meant, you'd be like my deck,
27:51
Speaker 1: which would suck because decks are kind of expensive. But
27:53
Speaker 1: it's your roof decking that you really be worried about.
27:56
Speaker 1: And that happens when the wind itself yours is the
28:00
Speaker 1: envelope of your house, like it breaks a window or
28:03
Speaker 1: something like that, and now all of a sudden, you've
28:04
Speaker 1: got a pressure difference inside and outside of your house,
28:07
Speaker 1: which can actually pop the roof right off of your house.
28:10
Speaker 1: Which once that happens, your your walls start to give way.
28:13
Speaker 1: It's a bad jamp. Wind is very destructive too. But
28:16
Speaker 1: the reason people started putting houses on stilts is because
28:20
Speaker 1: that wind is so strong and the hurricane can be
28:23
Speaker 1: so massive that it actually pushes the ocean inland. It's
28:27
Speaker 1: it's not like a huge wave. It's a it's here's
28:30
Speaker 1: the ocean way further inland than it should be, and
28:33
Speaker 1: it's called a storm surge. And it's a huge problem
28:36
Speaker 1: with with hurricanes. Yeah. And you know, I've been to
28:40
Speaker 1: places before and after, uh, just from year to year
28:43
Speaker 1: on vacation, and the it can literally remake the coastline. Um,
28:48
Speaker 1: they look vastly different after a hurricane. I think that
28:52
Speaker 1: one of the years we went to Isle of Palms,
28:54
Speaker 1: it was after a hurricane and instead of uh, you know,
29:00
Speaker 1: the walk to the beach from the house, instead of
29:03
Speaker 1: you know that sort of gradual uh declined to the
29:07
Speaker 1: to the water, it was in some places like a
29:10
Speaker 1: fift ft drop of just a sheer wall cliff of
29:14
Speaker 1: sand and people had ladders and stuff like that. You
29:17
Speaker 1: would literally have to climb down a ladder to get
29:19
Speaker 1: down to the to the ocean e beach part. Yeah,
29:21
Speaker 1: and that's not good if your house is built on
29:24
Speaker 1: that sand that used to be there. And as we
29:26
Speaker 1: saw in our um, we're running on a sand and
29:28
Speaker 1: that really matters episode that we need that sand. We
29:31
Speaker 1: can't afford the ocean to just come reclaim that that's
29:34
Speaker 1: our sand. Yeah, And well, the good thing about Isle
29:38
Speaker 1: of Palmzo is those houses are set back a great deal. Uh,
29:41
Speaker 1: They're not on that sand. There's that big area of
29:46
Speaker 1: sea grass and just do shrubbery and stuff in between. Uh.
29:50
Speaker 1: And so it's it's just a safer bet when you're
29:52
Speaker 1: trying to book a place because it's not it's not
29:55
Speaker 1: a hurricane proof. But by the time the water gets there,
29:58
Speaker 1: I mean that would have to be a really really
30:00
Speaker 1: big surge. Yeah yeah, um, but it happens. It does happen.
30:04
Speaker 1: I mean it definitely like a storm search can be
30:07
Speaker 1: pretty bad. I think Hurricane Harvey uh in Houston in
30:10
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen. One of the reasons it was so
30:13
Speaker 1: destructive it was, from what I saw, was the second
30:16
Speaker 1: most expensive storm UM that's ever hit the US. It
30:20
Speaker 1: costs a hundred and twenty dollars that's it. It costs
30:24
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty eight billion dollars in UM damages.
30:28
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because of that
30:30
Speaker 1: storm search and not just you know, flooding houses and
30:35
Speaker 1: causing property damage. That kind of storm search can overwhelm
30:39
Speaker 1: your sewer system and mess with your drinking water supply
30:43
Speaker 1: and do all sorts of horrible stuff. We can kill
30:45
Speaker 1: off tons of wildlife because that's something that gets overlooked
30:48
Speaker 1: in hurricanes. You know, the humans are so worried about
30:51
Speaker 1: us and then our pets and everything. The wildlife itself
30:54
Speaker 1: can really take a hit like fish. Hurricanes can kill fish.
30:59
Speaker 1: That's how destruct if they are. They slam them into
31:01
Speaker 1: like underwater outcroppings and sandbars and stuff and just kill
31:06
Speaker 1: the fish. That's how That's how forceful these things are.
31:09
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of other problems that arise from
31:13
Speaker 1: the hurricane, in particular the storm surge too, that we've
31:16
Speaker 1: only really started to kind of grasp in the last
31:19
Speaker 1: like a few decades of of examining hurricanes. Yeah, but
31:24
Speaker 1: you were talking about tracking, it's gotten so much better
31:27
Speaker 1: these days. Um. On the ground, there's something called the
31:31
Speaker 1: Regional Specialized meter Meteorological Centers, and this is just basically
31:36
Speaker 1: a network all around the world of global centers that
31:40
Speaker 1: are designated by the World Meteorological Organization, and they are
31:44
Speaker 1: the ones who track these things using weather satellites, uh,
31:49
Speaker 1: using infrared technology and infrared sensors. They're they're going to
31:54
Speaker 1: detect all those all the minutia of the temperature differences, uh,
31:59
Speaker 1: cloud heights, all these things. You know how you mentioned
32:01
Speaker 1: that all these things have to kind of be perfect.
32:05
Speaker 1: They have all these ways of measuring these little bits
32:09
Speaker 1: of perfection as they align, and they know pretty well. Now, Um,
32:16
Speaker 1: you know, things can change and things can reverse course.
32:18
Speaker 1: I know people get frustrated when they keep changing the
32:21
Speaker 1: path of the herc and you know, they don't keep
32:23
Speaker 1: changing it when they report all changes. But that's I
32:27
Speaker 1: think people kind of act that way. Sometimes they do
32:29
Speaker 1: for sure, you know, you make me leave my house
32:31
Speaker 1: and this thing didn't even make landfall. It's like they're
32:34
Speaker 1: they're doing a pretty good job and they're doing the
32:36
Speaker 1: best they can. Well, it's problematic too as far as
32:38
Speaker 1: forecasting goes, because if you do that to people in
32:42
Speaker 1: a coastal area, you know, a couple of times in
32:45
Speaker 1: one year, they're gonna stop listening to you, and you know,
32:48
Speaker 1: you might be a percent right and and something's gonna
32:51
Speaker 1: make landfall right on top of them and they're not
32:52
Speaker 1: gonna leave. So there is definitely a fine line, and
32:55
Speaker 1: there is kind of a balance between knowing too soon
33:00
Speaker 1: and um and not knowing at all. And we're kind
33:03
Speaker 1: of working our way toward that sweet spot for sure,
33:06
Speaker 1: and it's gotten way better. But very very famously, if
33:09
Speaker 1: you ever follow hurricanes um as they start to kind
33:12
Speaker 1: of come towards the US, Like there's the famous the
33:16
Speaker 1: spaghetti model. Have you ever seen one of those? So
33:20
Speaker 1: all of those is just a tangle of tracks of
33:24
Speaker 1: the hurricane that have been forecasted. So the European model
33:28
Speaker 1: is typically thought of as probably the most accurate, and
33:31
Speaker 1: that's put together by an agency in Europe and they say,
33:33
Speaker 1: here's what the track that we think. Then there's like
33:36
Speaker 1: ten or a dozen or fifteen different agencies and groups
33:39
Speaker 1: all forecasting a track. When you put them all together,
33:42
Speaker 1: it looks like different colored lines of spaghetti over the map,
33:45
Speaker 1: and you get a pretty good idea of just where
33:48
Speaker 1: the thing's gonna go based on all of these different
33:53
Speaker 1: um predictions, kind of like the wisdom of crowd, do
33:55
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Where the more information you
33:57
Speaker 1: have and you put together, the more guests as put together,
34:01
Speaker 1: probably the closer combined they're going to be too accurate
34:05
Speaker 1: than any one of them individually would have a chance
34:08
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, and the cool thing about spaghetti models,
34:11
Speaker 1: and this is true of like uh, percentage of rain
34:15
Speaker 1: and stuff that you might see every day is a
34:16
Speaker 1: lot of it is based on past data, um, like
34:19
Speaker 1: what's going on now for sure, But then when you
34:21
Speaker 1: plug that into all the past data and behaviors of
34:24
Speaker 1: storms in the past and what they've done and how
34:26
Speaker 1: they've moved and behaved, you can get a pretty cool model.
34:29
Speaker 1: And I've always loved that about whether that they use
34:33
Speaker 1: so much historical data to predict what could happen this time, right,
34:38
Speaker 1: That's what they used to produce the Cone of Uncertainty,
34:42
Speaker 1: which is one of the most confusing meteorological models, maybe
34:47
Speaker 1: any kind of model there is on the planet. Um,
34:51
Speaker 1: it's a really great useful tool if you know what
34:54
Speaker 1: it's talking about. If you don't know exactly what it's
34:58
Speaker 1: talking about, it's seriously confused, using, and really misleading in
35:01
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. But with the Cone of Uncertainty
35:04
Speaker 1: is everybody's seen it. It's like kind of like this funnel.
35:07
Speaker 1: It looks like a tornado basically that that looks like
35:10
Speaker 1: it shows the path and width of the hurricane. It
35:15
Speaker 1: goes from kind of small to wider and wider and wider,
35:18
Speaker 1: so it looks like what it's showing you is the
35:20
Speaker 1: track of a hurricane and how big the hurricane is
35:24
Speaker 1: gonna grow over time. That's not at all with the
35:27
Speaker 1: cone of uncertainty. Shows what the cone of uncertainty is. Instead,
35:30
Speaker 1: it's a plot of like I think about five different
35:34
Speaker 1: circles representing the next seventy two onto five days out forecasts,
35:41
Speaker 1: and it says, here's all the data we have, and
35:44
Speaker 1: we're crunching those numbers, and then we're comparing them to
35:49
Speaker 1: how accurate we were in the last five years for
35:52
Speaker 1: predicting hurricanes that were five years out. And then all
35:55
Speaker 1: of a sudden you put that together. That forms the circle.
35:57
Speaker 1: And that five day out circle is always the biggest
36:00
Speaker 1: because it's hardest to predict weather patterns five days out.
36:04
Speaker 1: But what it looks like when you take those increasingly
36:07
Speaker 1: larger circles and connect them with the line is that
36:10
Speaker 1: it's forming a path. And really what it's showing is
36:13
Speaker 1: this is the potential distance between the track of the
36:18
Speaker 1: hurricane the center of the hurricane um and it could
36:22
Speaker 1: it could land anywhere in here, not the edges of it.
36:25
Speaker 1: We're talking just just the center. So every time hurricane
36:28
Speaker 1: season rolls around, people go and look up what the
36:31
Speaker 1: cone of uncertainty means, because it doesn't mean at all
36:33
Speaker 1: what you think it does. Hopefully, I've cleared it up
36:36
Speaker 1: for like two people, and I probably just confused the
36:39
Speaker 1: other million even further. Uh. The cool thing about those
36:43
Speaker 1: two is that they can be changed with a sharpie.
36:46
Speaker 1: That's right, it's really neat. Seen it done. All right,
36:50
Speaker 1: I think we should take a break maybe and come
36:51
Speaker 1: back and talk about these hurricane names history. How about that.
36:55
Speaker 1: Let's do it alright, So hurricane names are named after people. Now, Uh,
37:28
Speaker 1: this wasn't always the case, and I didn't know this.
37:30
Speaker 1: This is kind of cool, but for many hundreds of years,
37:33
Speaker 1: if you were in the West Indies, you would hear
37:36
Speaker 1: hurricanes named after the Catholic Saints Day on the day
37:41
Speaker 1: that that storm made landfall. So it would be like
37:45
Speaker 1: Hurricane San Felipe hit Puerto Rico in on September six.
37:51
Speaker 1: Another little fun fact is if another hurricane hits on
37:54
Speaker 1: that same day, which actually happened in one, they would
37:59
Speaker 1: name that the second, So that was Hurricane San Felipe
38:02
Speaker 1: the second. During World War two is when we started
38:07
Speaker 1: to give human names. Uh, and they were all masculine
38:11
Speaker 1: names though. Yeah, I can kind of followed that whole,
38:14
Speaker 1: like Bravo, whiskey tango thing. Yeah, how does that? I
38:19
Speaker 1: don't understand that. Well, it's like that, what do you mean?
38:21
Speaker 1: It's because those aren't names. I don't understand it either
38:24
Speaker 1: from what I saw. From what I saw, we didn't
38:27
Speaker 1: really start to use names in the West, um until
38:31
Speaker 1: I think the fifties or the seventies. So masculine names
38:36
Speaker 1: like Bravo and tango is just they're calling that a
38:39
Speaker 1: masculine name. I guess so, because I think we started
38:41
Speaker 1: using human names in the fifties and then um, we
38:46
Speaker 1: started using um, male and female names in the seventies.
38:52
Speaker 1: At first, it was first they were they were ladies, right, yeah,
38:56
Speaker 1: And they said, well, that's that's not cool to name
38:58
Speaker 1: that after woman. And and every time you guys show
39:02
Speaker 1: like the weather model, the forecast model, it's it's not
39:06
Speaker 1: a hurricane, it's a woman with rollers in her hair
39:08
Speaker 1: and a rolling pin yelling. It seems sexist. And everyone
39:13
Speaker 1: finally said, you know, you're right, that is sexist. So
39:15
Speaker 1: we're gonna start to alternate between men's names and women's names.
39:19
Speaker 1: And so at the beginning of every hurricane season, the
39:23
Speaker 1: the what is the World Meteorological Association, Yeah organization. Sorry.
39:29
Speaker 1: They release a list of all of the names that
39:32
Speaker 1: the Atlantic hurricane season could possibly have, and each name
39:36
Speaker 1: starts with a different letter A, B, C, D, and
39:39
Speaker 1: so on. Can I listen? This year's you got Arthur? Okay,
39:45
Speaker 1: Bertha nice crystal ball. Yeah, you got Dolly, you got Edward,
39:54
Speaker 1: you have Faye. And we should mention too that they use,
39:58
Speaker 1: you know, names from uh places all over the world now,
40:03
Speaker 1: which is great because hurricanes affected places all over the world.
40:07
Speaker 1: So you have Faith and you have Gunzalo, you have Hannah,
40:11
Speaker 1: you have uh. I don't know even know how you
40:13
Speaker 1: pronounced this. I S A I A S says no
40:19
Speaker 1: I S A I A S should say us, I
40:25
Speaker 1: say us. Then you've got Josephine, nice name. You've got Kyle.
40:29
Speaker 1: You've got Laura, You've got Marco. You've got Nana, sweet Nana. Uh.
40:34
Speaker 1: You've got Omar paul Lette, which I for some reason
40:39
Speaker 1: sounds funny to me, Hurricane paul. Uh. You've got Renee, Sally, Teddy,
40:46
Speaker 1: Vicky and finishing up because they don't have y or
40:50
Speaker 1: Z for some reason. Uh, Wilfred, that's a good one,
40:54
Speaker 1: Hurricane Wilfred sounds tough or an ex Yumi's predicted that
40:57
Speaker 1: Hurricane Nana is going to be a particularly bad one.
41:04
Speaker 1: And there's actually a longstanding myth that was supposedly, um uh,
41:10
Speaker 1: found to be correct by some study a few years
41:12
Speaker 1: back that people um don't respect the female names of hurricanes.
41:20
Speaker 1: But yeah, so there's this whole there's there's okay, I
41:24
Speaker 1: don't know what's wrong with me, I'm putting anything so
41:26
Speaker 1: terribly a day. But get this, there's this, this this
41:30
Speaker 1: urban legend that hurricanes that have women's names are the
41:35
Speaker 1: most destructive because people don't take them as seriously and
41:39
Speaker 1: they don't leave. So there's more people present to be
41:41
Speaker 1: killed when a hurricane lands for a woman named hurricane
41:45
Speaker 1: than a man named hurricane. And for a long time,
41:48
Speaker 1: for a long time, it was just this kind of
41:50
Speaker 1: old wives tale or something, and then this this study
41:53
Speaker 1: found in like I think two thousand fourteen or something
41:56
Speaker 1: like that that know this actually is true. Somebody sat
41:59
Speaker 1: down to crunch the number. And then finally, I think
42:01
Speaker 1: two years ago, they're like, this study was terrible, and
42:05
Speaker 1: that's absolutely not true. If we looked at the numbers
42:07
Speaker 1: two and that's just not the case. All right. Well,
42:11
Speaker 1: that's good to know, because that's the dumbest thing I've
42:12
Speaker 1: ever heard. It is kind of dumb, but it has
42:15
Speaker 1: like this weird kernel of truth to It's like a
42:17
Speaker 1: perfect urban legend, you know what I mean, because it's
42:20
Speaker 1: believable and who's who's ever gonna sit down and prove
42:24
Speaker 1: it one way or another? You know? Yeah, that's true.
42:27
Speaker 1: Oh wait, hold on one more thing, choke. While we're
42:29
Speaker 1: on names, Um, there are different names elsewhere in the world.
42:32
Speaker 1: So the names you just said those are for Atlantic hurricanes.
42:35
Speaker 1: In Australia they have their own set of names that
42:38
Speaker 1: they name cyclones, and then elsewhere in the world, there's
42:42
Speaker 1: thirteen member nations that name typhoons and some cyclones um
42:47
Speaker 1: countries like Bangladesh and India and Thailand. Each one submits
42:51
Speaker 1: thirteen names, and each list contains thirteen names from each
42:56
Speaker 1: one of those countries, So you have a hundred and
42:57
Speaker 1: sixty names to choose from every year. So depending on
43:00
Speaker 1: where you are in the world, whether patterns going to
43:03
Speaker 1: have a much more localized name than than what you
43:06
Speaker 1: would expect. That's right, And if a hurricane is really destructive,
43:11
Speaker 1: they will retire that. And I'm using air quotes there
43:16
Speaker 1: because they really just put it down for ten years.
43:20
Speaker 1: I don't know why they don't just don't do it forever,
43:22
Speaker 1: Like there should never be another, Like in eleven years,
43:25
Speaker 1: surely they won't have a Hurricane Katrina or an Andrew
43:28
Speaker 1: or a Harvey. Right, I don't know why would they.
43:31
Speaker 1: There's so many names. I don't know why bring it
43:33
Speaker 1: any name back. I have no idea. I think they're like,
43:35
Speaker 1: we have better things to do than come up with
43:37
Speaker 1: more stupid names, you know. Yeah, I just uh, I
43:42
Speaker 1: mean they obviously do that to avoid confusion. Uh. And
43:45
Speaker 1: once this storm is sort of this legendary storm, like
43:47
Speaker 1: a Katrina. Um, there's just no reason to ever name
43:51
Speaker 1: another one that. No, No, I'm with you, I agree, Um,
43:54
Speaker 1: if you you don't believe in luck, I just think
43:56
Speaker 1: it's not a good idea. It does seem like ten
43:58
Speaker 1: years is a little short. I could not see them
44:01
Speaker 1: doing another Katrina. That's just not gonna happen, you know. No,
44:04
Speaker 1: there's no way. So let's talk about climate change. You
44:07
Speaker 1: want to, Yeah, Well, before we talk about climate change,
44:12
Speaker 1: just quickly, as far as the historical record goes you know,
44:15
Speaker 1: there's always been hurricanes, and this will kind of segue
44:18
Speaker 1: nicely into climate change because things are getting worse. But
44:22
Speaker 1: there always have been hurricanes, even way back in the day.
44:24
Speaker 1: We didn't have great records, but there are um you
44:29
Speaker 1: can do research on, uh, like cave wall drawings and
44:33
Speaker 1: things like that seemed to indicate stuff like hurricanes. And
44:37
Speaker 1: I think there was an L s U team that
44:39
Speaker 1: studied thousands of years of lake bed evidence and they
44:43
Speaker 1: can tell that over I think like thirty four years,
44:46
Speaker 1: there have been about a dozen Category four or higher
44:49
Speaker 1: in that area, most of which were in the past
44:52
Speaker 1: thousand years. Yeah, it does, but I mean that's just
44:58
Speaker 1: for that area. Another one, there was a really big
45:03
Speaker 1: hurricane historically speaking, when Um Genghis Khan was going to
45:07
Speaker 1: invade Japan in twelve seventy four. The Mongols were invading Japan.
45:12
Speaker 1: There's a fleet that had something like a hundred or
45:15
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand people on board and they were really
45:18
Speaker 1: going to invade Japan, and Hurricane blew in and sunk
45:23
Speaker 1: the fleet, and the Japanese had a name for this
45:26
Speaker 1: incredible miraculous act of mercy by whatever God was watching
45:31
Speaker 1: over them. Uh. They named it divine Wind. Yeah, and
45:35
Speaker 1: that actually would come into term into use later on
45:38
Speaker 1: in World War Two because divine wind in Japanese is
45:41
Speaker 1: kamakassi kamakazi. Yeah, and that's a chapter in our book, right.
45:47
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I was teeing you up. I was like,
45:49
Speaker 1: come on, Chuck, I didn't know if we could reveal that,
45:52
Speaker 1: But yeah, we got a book coming out this fall,
45:55
Speaker 1: and uh, you can preorder it now, plug plug plug.
45:58
Speaker 1: And there's a great, great chapter on kama kazee in there.
46:01
Speaker 1: The whole thing is just great from top to bottom. Chuck.
46:04
Speaker 1: I'm wondering when will be allowed to do some of
46:08
Speaker 1: those chapters as podcast episodes if ever, I don't know.
46:12
Speaker 1: I don't know what it gives us that permission. I
46:14
Speaker 1: think we give ourselves that permission, okay, us, okay, maybe
46:18
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of years after it's out, we can
46:21
Speaker 1: start start doling those out a little bit, harvesting it
46:23
Speaker 1: for parts. Sure, that's another way to put it, right.
46:27
Speaker 1: They could have another life. So um, well, I mean
46:30
Speaker 1: the stuff that we talk about, they're not like necessarily
46:33
Speaker 1: entire podcast episodes. Like there there's definitely more to be
46:36
Speaker 1: said about it. So I think we can take any
46:39
Speaker 1: single one of those chapters and turn it into a
46:41
Speaker 1: podcast episode. So climate change, here's a startling statistics. Since
46:47
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, the number of Cat five and Cat
46:50
Speaker 1: for storms has just about doubled, and to the casual
46:55
Speaker 1: observer a couple of things, it seems like they're getting
46:59
Speaker 1: were and more frequent. And you don't have to be
47:03
Speaker 1: a genius to figure out if you need warm water
47:07
Speaker 1: to make a hurricane, and ocean waters are warming due
47:10
Speaker 1: to climate change, then you're gonna have more frequent and
47:14
Speaker 1: more severe storms, right or now? Yeah, I mean that's
47:17
Speaker 1: the that's how logic goes, and they basically think that's
47:20
Speaker 1: a given that we're going to have more frequent and
47:23
Speaker 1: more powerful storms. But the the at least according to
47:26
Speaker 1: Woods Whole Ocean of Graphic Institute, there are plenty of
47:30
Speaker 1: X factors left that it's not like we just definitively
47:33
Speaker 1: understand how bad hurricanes are gonna be or how many
47:36
Speaker 1: more we're gonna have, because remember, the surface water has
47:39
Speaker 1: to reach down about a hundred and fifty feet for
47:42
Speaker 1: a hurricane to form. And one of the big questions
47:44
Speaker 1: is if the if there is global warming going on
47:48
Speaker 1: and it's heating the ocean. How deep is it heating
47:51
Speaker 1: the ocean? Because if if that water, that warm water,
47:55
Speaker 1: went beyond a hundred fifty feet, then hurricanes should ostensibly
47:59
Speaker 1: be able to become bigger and bigger. And similarly, if
48:04
Speaker 1: that the surface temperature of the ocean is rising, then
48:07
Speaker 1: that just means more evaporating water, which is the key
48:10
Speaker 1: that's the fuel to any hurricane. Is that moist evaporating
48:14
Speaker 1: water that's rising. That the more you have of that,
48:17
Speaker 1: the bigger amount more powerful as storm can be. The
48:20
Speaker 1: more energy there is for the storm to use too,
48:24
Speaker 1: to become big and huge and destructive. The question is
48:27
Speaker 1: you know, just how bad is it going to be?
48:29
Speaker 1: But there does seem to be just general consensus that yes,
48:33
Speaker 1: climate change is happening and it's going to result in
48:36
Speaker 1: in worse hurricanes. And it's I mean, already there were
48:39
Speaker 1: two named storms this year in the Atlantic before hurricane
48:44
Speaker 1: season even started. So they think hurricane season is gonna
48:47
Speaker 1: last longer. Uh, it's gonna start earlier and last longer.
48:50
Speaker 1: There's going to be more of them, They're probably going
48:52
Speaker 1: to be more destructive. There's something else that I thought
48:56
Speaker 1: was Really interesting though, too, is that um, the uh,
49:01
Speaker 1: this particular year may not be as bad as it
49:05
Speaker 1: would have been otherwise. It was supposed to be really
49:08
Speaker 1: bad because of the warm sea levels. Um, because it
49:11
Speaker 1: started earlier, and because it's a lat Ninja year, which
49:15
Speaker 1: actually pushes hurricanes back out to sea eventually. Um. Because
49:21
Speaker 1: there's a lat Ninja, those those breezes are kind of stilled,
49:25
Speaker 1: comparatively speaking, so that her any hurricanes that do develop
49:28
Speaker 1: are just gonna sit on land like it did, like
49:31
Speaker 1: Dorian did the Bahamas a year or so ago. It
49:34
Speaker 1: just sat on the Bahamas for forty eight hours. That's
49:37
Speaker 1: not supposed to happen. And they were worried that that's
49:39
Speaker 1: going to happen because this is a lat Ninia year.
49:41
Speaker 1: But you know the Saharan dust storms that's going on,
49:46
Speaker 1: they think that that's actually drying the air and preventing
49:49
Speaker 1: hurricanes from forming. Right now, the question is how long
49:52
Speaker 1: that will last. Well, it lasts through the whole hurricane season,
49:55
Speaker 1: or will that eventually stall and hurricanes will come raging
49:58
Speaker 1: through in August and September? Who knows. Wow, so there's
50:03
Speaker 1: hurricanes everybody, that's right. I think we're going to release
50:07
Speaker 1: a bonus add on someday into our feed where I
50:10
Speaker 1: try again to explain hurricanes and the cone of uncertainty.
50:15
Speaker 1: This stuff drives me nuts. Man, Yeah, you're ready, I'm ready. Well, obviously,
50:21
Speaker 1: since we're done talking about hurricanes, that means it's time
50:23
Speaker 1: for listener mail. I'm gonna call this the other side
50:28
Speaker 1: of the coin. We always like to keep things fair
50:31
Speaker 1: and balance here, right, right, Hey, guys discovered your show
50:34
Speaker 1: about two years ago and wondered, where have you been
50:37
Speaker 1: on my life? I love the show. Don't change a
50:39
Speaker 1: thing and the Robber Barons episode. He said that conservatives,
50:43
Speaker 1: Josh said, Conservatives say people aren't perfect. We can never
50:45
Speaker 1: have a perfect society, so let people do whatever they want.
50:48
Speaker 1: That's kind of right, but it's oper simplified in their
50:51
Speaker 1: for misleading. Uh in our view, Uh, and I take it.
50:55
Speaker 1: Tim is a conservative. He says, since humans are all corrupt,
50:58
Speaker 1: obviously some more than others, no government can be uncorrupt
51:02
Speaker 1: since it's run by people. Therefore, we should limit the
51:05
Speaker 1: power of government and give people more freedom. Since people
51:08
Speaker 1: will generally act in their own best interests, let them
51:11
Speaker 1: decide how they want to spend their money. Who they
51:13
Speaker 1: work for, and who they hire and fire. As long
51:16
Speaker 1: as the government protects people's basic rights from others, we
51:20
Speaker 1: will have a pretty good society. I've always been conflicted
51:24
Speaker 1: about anti monopoly laws, but the longer I live, the
51:27
Speaker 1: more I think they're a good thing, because we should
51:30
Speaker 1: limit the power of large companies, just as we limit
51:33
Speaker 1: the power of the government, since those companies are also
51:36
Speaker 1: run by corrupt people. Capitalism says, of course you're selfish,
51:41
Speaker 1: and so am I, So if you want my money,
51:43
Speaker 1: you have to give me some kind of product or
51:44
Speaker 1: service that makes my life better. Again, we can never
51:47
Speaker 1: have a perfect society, but it would be far worse
51:50
Speaker 1: if the government has too much power to decide how
51:53
Speaker 1: we spend our money, because again, they are corrupt. Also,
51:57
Speaker 1: thanks for all the great research and the super fun
51:59
Speaker 1: way you in it. Keep it up. That is Tim
52:02
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. That's pretty awesome. Thanks a lot, Tim, that
52:05
Speaker 1: was a really great email. Um well, I'm a conservative
52:08
Speaker 1: now Wow. All right, I'm pretty weak willed as it is.
52:17
Speaker 1: Um No, but Tim, that was great. Thank you for
52:19
Speaker 1: explaining it further because I definitely knew I was oversimplifying
52:23
Speaker 1: things and to just kind of have the tea's crossing
52:25
Speaker 1: the eyes dotted. That's very helpful. We're gonna have to
52:28
Speaker 1: bring you on to explain hurricanes one day. Yeah, and
52:31
Speaker 1: that was a better email than a lot of the
52:33
Speaker 1: blowback we got, which wasn't so instructive and more just like, uh,
52:38
Speaker 1: you guys just reduced that and it's not true blame.
52:42
Speaker 1: I guess you can put in uh. Well, if you
52:45
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, like Tim didn't
52:47
Speaker 1: just be a champion hero, you can do that. You
52:50
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff podcast and i
52:54
Speaker 1: heart radio dot com. Stuff you should know it is
52:59
Speaker 1: a product of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts.
53:02
Speaker 1: For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
53:05
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