Back If Katrina escapes retirement, it may figure in the 2011 list of scheduled hurricanes
All was well till then; for, economic activity increased across the nation, according to the Beige Book, and there was widespread growth caused by expansion in "retail sales, services, finance, construction, manufacturing, mining, energy, and tourism". Factories were chugging, cash registers were busy, Baltimore Sun would report.
To know about the economic impact, you need to see the site of the Congressional Budget Office (www.cbo.gov) and read the Macroeconomic and Budgetary Effects of Hurricane Katrina, a nine-page document dated September 6. It states, "Katrina could dampen real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the second half of the year by half to one percentage point and reduce employment through the end of this year by about 4,00,000." Media estimates vary, though. For instance, Financial Post on www.canada.com predicts that Hurricane Katrina will lead to the disappearance of up to 5,00,000 US jobs this month, the most dramatic decline in 30 years.
To come to terms with the catastrophe, `Bush seeks $52 billion (euro 77 billion) in hurricane aid', as Ireland Online reports; and there are more than a thousand `related' news stories about how the earlier $10.5 billion aid provided on September 2 has proved to be insufficient.
"Stocks moved in a narrow band, but trading was choppy as investors took each new piece of news and tried to parse the effects of Hurricane Katrina," reports Carthage Press, (www.carthagepress.com) `6 minutes ago'. "Economically speaking, Katrina is no 9/11. It may be much worse," writes Daniel Gross quite ominously on http://slate.msn.com. Time we come to terms with the word.
Hurricane is "a storm with a violent wind, in particular a tropical cycle in the Caribbean," defines Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Hurricane can also refer to "somebody or something resembling a violent storm in force, speed, or effect," in Encarta. "Working with Mel Gibson is a little like waltzing with a hurricane. It's always exciting, and you're never quite sure where it's going to take you," is a quote of James Caviezel to fit hurricane to people.
"Welcome to the exciting world of hurricane journalism! While your highly paid colleagues on the anchor desk are broadcasting from the dry safety of a heavily fortified television studio, you and your camera crew will be out in the maw of the storm, risking your lives for no good reason," says Carl Hiaasen, to paint the other side of hurricane. And John Lennon would remark, "It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?"
The word's origin goes to Spanish huracan, "probably from Taino hurakan `god of the storm'." Akin to Arawak kulakani, thunder, says www.bartleby.com. "1555, a partially deformed adoptation from Spanish huracan (Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, `Historia General y Natural de las Indias,' 1547-9), furacan (in the works of Pedro Mártir De Anghiera, chaplain to the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and historian of Spanish explorations), from an Arawakan (West Indies) word,'" elaborates Online Etymology Dictionary. `In Portugese, it became furacão. Confusion of initial h- and f- common in Spanish in these years." On the mix-up, www.etymonline.com provides an example from Richard Eden's Decades of the New World: "These tempestes of the ayer (which the Grecians caule Tiphones ...) they caule furacanes."
One learns that OED (Oxford English Dictionary) records some 39 different spellings for the word, mostly from the late sixteenth century. These include forcane, herrycano, harrycain, and hurlecane. "Modern form became frequent from 1650, established after 1688. Shakespeare uses hurricano (King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida), but in reference to waterspouts."
You can hear King Lear saying, "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!" And Troilus responding to Ulysses: "Not the dreadful spout which shipmen do the hurricano call."
Hurricane, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, is "a tropical cyclone with winds of 74 miles (118 kilometres) per hour or greater that occurs especially in the western Atlantic, that is usually accompanied by rain, thunder, and lightning, and that sometimes moves into temperate latitudes". Word's synonyms for hurricane are storm, gale, tempest, tornado, cyclone, typhoon, and whirlwind.
However, a hurricane is distinguished from every other kind of tempest by the extreme violence of the wind, and by its sudden changes; the wind often veering suddenly several points, sometimes a quarter of the circle and even more, explains Webster's 1828 Dictionary. In the East Indies and the Chinese seas, hurricane is generally known as typhoons, states the 1911 Edition of Encyclopaedia. "A tropical cyclone around Australia is called a willy-willy; and over the Indian Ocean, a tropical cyclone," informs The Columbia Encyclopedia. "Hurricanes have a life span of 1 to 30 days. They weaken and are transformed into extratropical cyclones after prolonged contact with the colder ocean waters of the middle latitudes, and they rapidly decay after moving over land areas," it adds.
One pioneering effort in the application of statistical analysis and econometric techniques to hurricane analysis and forecasting is by William Gray, professor of meteorology at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, according to the Lake and Water Word Glossary on www.nalms.org. His opinion was that hurricanes are caused by global, rather than local factors. "His research has led to an extensive quantitative expression to estimate both the number and intensity of hurricanes in the western Atlantic region (to include the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico) during the usual peak hurricane season of mid-August through mid-October," says the site and presents a long equation of "an Econometric Model for forecasting hurricane activity based upon a number of climatological explanatory factors covering a vast geographic range".
"In meteorology, a tropical cyclone (or tropical disturbance, tropical depression, tropical storm, typhoon, or hurricane, depending on strength and location) is a type of low pressure system which generally forms in the tropics," informs Wikipedia. "While they can be highly destructive, tropical cyclones are an important part of the atmospheric circulation system, which moves heat from the equatorial region towards the higher latitudes." Hurricanes form when the energy released by the condensation of moisture in rising air causes a chain reaction, explains http://en.wikipedia.org with the help of diagram to show how the air heats up, rises further, leading to more condensation. "The air flowing out of the top of this `chimney' drops towards the ground, forming powerful winds."
On the Beaufort Scale, hurricane scores the highest, that is 12, capable of `widespread damage'. Zero is for `calm', when wind speed is less than 1 mph and `smoke rises vertically'; at 6, `strong breeze', "large branches move; overhead wires whistle; umbrellas difficult to control"; and at 8, `fresh gale', "twigs break off trees; moving cars veer." The Saffir-Simpson scale rates "the severity of hurricanes as a measure of the damage they cause", informs www.encyclopedia.com.
`Hurricane deck' is a covered deck at or near the top of a ship's superstructure. `Hurricane lamp' is an oil lamp with a glass chimney, designed to protect the flame even in high winds. It is more familiar as Lalu's election symbol, about which he'd said, "Yeh jo lalten hai jisko lok angrezi mein hurricane lamp bhi kahte hain woh andhi mein bhi nahin bujhta hai aur dilli mein bhi ja kar jalega", as reported on www.outlookindia.com. `Hurricane tape' is a strong adhesive tape used on windows to keep the glass in place in strong winds.
July 2005 was a record-setting month in the world of Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, says www.nasa.gov. "That's because there were more named storms recorded in the month of July than ever in the hurricane history books." Hurricanes are given names, but why?
For answer, look at what www.fema.gov, the site of Federal Emergency Management Agency, says in a page for kids: "To help us identify storms and track them as they move across the ocean. Remember, there can be more than one hurricane at a time and without naming them, we could get confused and which storm we're talking about."
For centuries, hurricanes were named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane occurred, one learns, but an Australian meteorologist began giving women's names to tropical storms before the end of the 19th century!" The World Meteorological Organization (www.wmo.ch) uses six lists in rotation. The same lists are reused every six years. The only time a new name is added is if a hurricane is very deadly or costly. Then the name is retired and a new name is chosen."
Iris, Jane, Joan, Keith, Klaus and Luis figure in the `retired' list. Will Katrina too join them, for having proved to be highly expensive? If Katrina escapes retirement, you can expect to see it in the list of scheduled hurricanes for the year 2011.
D. Murali
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