Cooking Up A Storm

Not Geography Geography Lesson 19

How Hurricanes Are Born

I am actually writing this on time for once; I have no idea what has come over me! This week we will explore the science behind hurricanes - very topical at the moment considering half of the Caribbean and Florida has been blown away over the last week. Despite everyone and the dog thinking they're Michael Fish after looking at BBC Weather once, meteorology and atmospheric science are no joke to study; there is more maths involved than anyone would ever wish to encounter, and a lot of guesswork. With that said, let's go!

Forming A Storm 

Like a good cuppa tea, tropical storms have to brew for a while before they become fully-fledged hurricanes. There are quite a few different conditions they need in which to do this, including: 

• Hurricanes (also known as typhoons when they occur in Asia) always form around the area of the equator, because they need warm water to cause air to rise and condense into water vapour that will eventually form clouds.

• They also need to have a large air temperature range (from warm at the bottom of the air column to cold at the top) so that the rising warm air can condense quickly to make cloud, and the cold can slide in to fill the gap. 

• They can't be too close to the equator though, because hurricanes need to utilise something called the 'Coriolis Force' to generate the spinning motion we all see on satellite images - the Coriolis Force basically stems from the Earth's spinning on its axis (physics physics blah blah) and pulls the air to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and the left in the Southern. The force is too low exactly on the equator to swirl the winds so the storms form either side of it. 

Once you have the conditions that you need, it goes a little something like this - the warm water heats the air just above it, and as we all learnt in school, hot air rises above cold air (because it is lighter). As hot air rises it cools and condenses to form storm clouds, and in the process some becomes too dense and drops back down to the bottom. The cold air that was previously above the now risen air drops to fill the gap created, where it then becomes heated and creates a cycle of heating, rising, and cooling. So far, all we have is a lot of clouds but not a hurricane; we need wind to get this party going. The wind is generated by all this rising and falling, creating turbulence in the air that we call wind. Now our Coriolis Force comes in to start the wind swirling, dragging the clouds with it and starting our storm on the path to becoming a hurricane. You can see this in the handy-dandy diagram below!

Not Any Old Storm Can Be A Hurricane 

The heating-cooling-spinning-cloud thing described above is still not a hurricane, it is actually called a Tropical Depression. To fully develop the air swirling in the middle and upper portions of the cyclone must continue to create turbulence by crashing against each other, and it must be fed by more hot air from the ocean and from air pockets in the atmosphere. Once we have this, we are really cooking. 

To be a hurricane rather than just a big storm, its winds must reach 74mph, which is more than enough to blow your wheely bin over. And even then it is still a 'baby' hurricane according to the Saffir-Simpson scale which is used to assign hurricanes their categories (seen below courtesy of NASA).  

Category	Wind Speed (mph)	Damage at Landfall	Storm Surge (feet)
1	74-95	Minimal	4-5
2	96-110	Moderate	6-8
3	111-129	Extensive	9-12
4	130-156	Extreme	13-18
5	157 or higher	Catastrophic	19+

Because of the strict conditions needed to form a storm big enough to become a hurricane, they generally always form in the same place in the North Atlantic, so they then tend to hit land in the same areas - the Caribbean and the South East of the US. That is when stuff really kicks off. 

Bring The Washing In 

The other week my mum was fuming because our chiminea cover blew away; at least it wasn't our kitchen extension. Joking aside, the damage that can and has been inflicted by large hurricanes is absolutely monstrous. There are on average 3 Category 3 hurricanes per year in the Atlantic, and as seen in the past month they aren't messing around. Most recently hurricane Irma has been slamming the Caribbean and Florida, leading to 84 deaths and over $62.67 billion in damages; it is the strongest Atlantic storm to form since 2007, and the strongest to hit the US since the infamous hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed over 1800 people. Irma's peak wind speed reached a horrifying 185mph, before gradually shrinking until it was reclassified as Category 1 just today. 

Who Comes Up With These Names?

Hurricanes started being given names by the National Hurricane Centre in 1953, and the job now falls to the the World Meteorological Organization. For the Atlantic, East North Pacific, and Central North Pacific, they have complied a list of names to be used in alphabetical order for the next six years. They will then be repeated for following six years, unless a hurricane is so severe that it become synonymous with that one storm (like Katrina) and then it is replaced with another name using the same letter. For the Atlantic, they use letters A - W (tough luck to all the Xaviers out there), where the first storm of the year will be 'A', the second 'B' and so on. 

My personal faves are Beryl (2018) because she sounds like a dinner lady, Chantal (2019) because she sounds like she would be escorted from the set of Jerry Springer, Dolly (2020) because Dolly Parton, and Omar (2020) because of Four Lions. 

Hope you enjoyed this week's post! 

Think Before You Flush!

Not Geography Geography Lesson 18

Can We Turn Our Fat Into Fuel?

When I was very little, I flushed all of the household flannels down the toilet. They blocked the drain (shocker) and my very unamused dad had to fish them out. A few years later, I also disposed of a variety of items that my tiny sticky hands could reach from the worktop, including some keys. Obviously, flushing things down the toilet and dropping them down drains is very bad for the plumbing and the sanity of your parents, but it is also kinda fun when you are small and can throw whatever you want in there and watch it be sucked down to disappear before your eyes. Magic! I have since shed my habit, but apparently I am not the only one who has indulged in some inappropriate flushing - as much to their horror, workmen for Thames Water this week found a 'monster fatberg' hiding in the sewer under London's Whitechapel. 

More Than A Few Gold Fish

I think it is fair to assume that anyone working a job which requires them to regularly examine the sewers of the capital probably has a pretty strong stomach. But I think it also fair to assume that anyone unfortunate enough to come across something described as a 'monster fatberg' will probably be reacquainted with their lunch sooner than they would have a liked. 

The 'berg is described as being 250m long, which is 10m longer than Tower Bridge, and weighs 130 tonnes, or the equivalent of 19 African elephants. It is a vile amalgamation of thousands of baby wipes, waste oil from restaurants and kitchens, and a whole host of other things that don't belong down there. There are probably more goldfish in there than in an entire Pets At Home. Because the pipe is actually quite narrow, all the gunk has spread out like the world's worst spaghetti. Anyone out there moaning about their girlfriend/wife/housemate's hair in drain needs to thank their lucky stars they don't work for Thames Water.

How Do You Tackle Such A Thing?

Apparently Thames Water already spend £1m per month (!!!) removing various disgusting things from London's sewers - fat bergs, shoes, toaster, alligators, you name it it's probably down there. For this extra special case, teams kitted out in protective suits are working with high-pressure water jets and shovels to chip away at the berg. The revolting pieces will then be sent for recycling at a facility in Stratford; I bet they will be over the moon when that delivery hoves into view. 

Well That's Disgusting - Anything Else?

Actually yes! There may be some kind of sliver-lining to this cloud, because Thames Water have joined forces with renewable energy firm Argent, to look into the possibility of turning their regular shipments of rancid congealed fat and make-up wipes into something useful for society. Hint: it is not filling really really naughty children's stockings with it for Christmas; although I know some kids who would really benefit from this... 

It is in fact, separating out the wipes and the goldfish and the other random paraphernalia, and using the remaining fat to produce bio-fuel. Considering the enormous quantities of these fatbergs that are sucked from the sewers - up to 3 per week just in London - and the growing need for alternative sources of fuel, this could be an ingenious solution! I have heard of car owners using cooking oil in their cars before, and apparently the only ill-effect is the production of a distinctly chip-flavoured smell, but as a nation we love chips anyway, and it still probably smells better than the fatbergs. The other solution is just not whizzing all this stuff down the drain in the first place, but that would be too easy of course!

Hope you enjoyed this rather revolting topic, and I will save you from the horror of seeing the fatberg, by instead using this gif which embodies the excitement 3 year old me felt when flushing all family's possessions down the toilet.