Take a spin around the National Hurricane Center Web site, and you’ll find some pretty esoteric facts. Why not try our little quiz to test your knowledge of weird hurricane data?
QUESTIONS
1. Worldwide encounter: If it’s 1350 Zulu time, what time is it in Manatee County?
2. Meteorologists love goofy jargon that must make them feel superior to the rest of us. Show them we won’t take it lying down by translating these meteorological acronyms into normal English usage: TUTT and SAL.
3. Name the three deadliest hurricanes in the United States from 1900-2009.
4. She loves me, she loves me knot: A storm’s wind is blowing at 140 knots. At how many miles per hour is it spinning?
5. How do I get a hurricane named after me?
6. There are hurricanes on other planets. (a) True (b) False
Answers
1. 9:50 a.m.
Zulu time, incidentally, is the military or aviation designation for Greenwich Mean Time (think London). Each time zone around the world has an alphabetical time designation. NOAA satellites use Zulu Time or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) as their time reference. The time zone in Manatee County is Romeo. There is a four-hour difference between Zulu and Romeo time during Eastern Daylight Time, and five hours’ difference during Eastern Standard Time.
2. A TUTT is a Tropical Upper Tropospheric Trough, important in hurricane forecasting because it may inhibit tropical hurricanes; SAL does not refer to Mustang Sally, but stands for Saharan Air Layer, a mass of dry, dusty air shown to have significant negative impact on hurricane intensity.
SAL information is at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/A17.html
3. 1900 — Category 4 unnamed monster that hit Galveston, Texas, killing an estimated 6,000 to 8,000; 1928 — Category 4 storm that hit South Florida and killed 1,836; 2005 — Category 4 Katrina, which killed about 1,500 when it hit the Gulf Coast near New Orleans.
4. One mph = 0.869 international nautical mph (knot), so it would be 161.1 mph.
5. Your name can’t begin with a letter like q, u, x, y or z, so all you Xaviers and Zeldas are out. Names can be submitted to the director of the World Meterological Organization Regional Association IV, who oversees the list for the Atlantic Basin. Names must be short, and not convey culturally sensitive possibilities or unintended or inflammatory meanings.
More information at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/B7.html
6. False. There are no other planets known to have warm water oceans from which true water cloud hurricanes can form. However, many astronomers and planetary meteorologists believe Jupiter exhibits such storms, in which ammonia takes the place of water. The principal candidate is the famous Great Red Spot, and the numerous whorls that surround it. The Spot exhibits an anticyclonic circulation at its top, just as tropical cyclones do at the top of the troposphere.
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