mrBadak.com

The hurricane season has started. Fortunately I am in Malaysia, specifically Sabah (north borneo - the island where King Kong lives) but for those living in the United States, the hurricane season for 2006 has started with the arrival of tropical storm Alberto.

Most of us has heard about the different categories for the hurricanes but do you know the difference between them? Most importantly, how much damage does each hurricane category can cause?

The Associated Press website has a flash-powered animation just to explain these categories. It’s complete with sound effect. When I was looking at this, together with the audio sound, it was sort-of frightening. Imagine how would you feel if you are trapped in a house and you know a category 5 hurricane is coming down on you, with all that cracking noise. Well I’m just glad I’m here in KK.

You can have a look at the animation here.

We know that each hurricanes are given names but do you know that these names are retired and not re-used when they are destructive? Off course the latest one is the Hurricane Katrina.

When hurricanes are particularly destructive, their names are retired from the list of usable names. Any country affected by a particularly terrible storm can request that the name be retired by petitioning the World Meteorological Organization. A retired name cannot be reused for at least ten years, to facilitate historic references, legal actions, insurance claim activities, and to avoid public confusion with another storm of the same name.

You can have a look at the retired list of hurricane names here (probably a good guide for not naming your future children).