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Ready-prepared articles on hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, and severe gales

 

  • 990417  How hurricanes get their names   For meteorologists, one of the signs of approaching summer is when the new list of hurricane names lands on our desks.
  • 990807   The Fastnet Disaster   The Fastnet Race, the culmination of the Admiral’s Cup, starts from Cowes, usually during the second week in August. The 1979 race will always
  • 000430   Hurricane Gordon et al   A chap called Gordon has been driving me to distraction recently by his inability to sort out a problem on my telephone line; I have also
  • 001104   Destructive gales, October 2000  Mr Prescott said in the House of Commons Tuesday that the previous day's gale was "according to the Met Office, the worst storm
  • 010630  More on hurricane names  Political correctness surfaced in the meteorological world in the 1970s – surprisingly early for a scientific discipline which was in those days
  • 020427  The hurricanes of 2002  Will it be big boisterous Bertha? Or frantic, ferocious Fay? Or perhaps wild, wilful Wilfred? Maybe it will be all three. During April the new list
  • 021005  Ex-hurricanes cross the Atlantic  In a typical autumn we can expect two or three ex-hurricanes to travel across the Atlantic ocean and liven up our weather for a day
  • 021116  Michael Fish’s hurricane  It will soon be 20 years since Michael Fish's hurricane blasted across southern England and northern France. At the time it was widely described
  • 990919 More on the 1987 storm  The lists of hurricane names rotate on a six-yearly basis, and every time that Hurricane Floyd appears, Michael Fish must give an involuntary
  • 021115  The Hurricane of 1703  we know a lot about the 1703 gale thanks to the diligent scholarship of Daniel Defoe. More famous, perhaps, for “Robinson Crusoe” than for his
  • 030124  The great northerly gale of ‘53 The extraordinary sequence of extreme weather events during 1952-53 culminated on the night of January 31 in a northerly gale of great
  • 030208  The Sheffield gale of ’62  One of the most common fallacies in meteorology is that mountain ranges always provide shelter to the region on the lee side of the range.
  • 030503  The earliest hurricane on record  The first storm of the 2003 season formed ten days ago near Bermuda, it was christened 'Ana', and remnants of this disturbance, having
  • 030913  Forecasting hurricanes in the UK September and October are the peak months for a little known complaint, found only among professional weather forecasters, called
  • 980614  The Indian cyclone, June ’98  The destructive cyclone which struck the coast of northwest India in early-June 1998 produced a tidal surge of three to five metres which
  • 980830  Hurricanes Bonnie and Danielle, 1998  Meteorological attention focussed on the eastern seaboard of the USA in late-August 1998, thanks to the unwelcome visit of
  • 980927  Hurricane Gilbert – the biggest on record  Hurricane Gilbert laid waste much of Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Martinique, and parts of Mexico in mid-September 1988.
  • 981108  Hurricane Mitch devastates Central America  The destructive floods, mudslides and landslips visited upon Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador
  • 990103  The destructive Boxing Day gale, 1998  December 1998 will long be remembered for the wild and windswept last week in Ireland and Scotland, when several
  • 990523  Cyclones in the Indian Ocean  A cyclone is a hurricane is a typhoon: all of these are tropical revolving storms, officially defined as producing sustained winds of 74 mph or
  • 990829  Hurricane forecasts improve  One of the most important advances in long-range weather prediction in the last decade has been in the forecasting of hurricanes,
  • 991107  The Orissa cyclone, Oct ’99  The cyclone which struck the Indian state of Orissa at the end of October 1999 was probably the most intense to hit this particular region for
  • 991212 The Danish hurricane, Dec ’99 The storm which tore a swathe across northern Europe on 3rd/4th December 1999 was the most destructive in the region for almost ten
  • 000123  The French storms of late-December ’99  You probably remember when Sevenoaks became “One-oak” following the October ’87 storm. Well, France now has a collection of similar