CLEVELAND — Welcome to the weather classroom! We're ready to help you learn!
3News meteorologist Jason Frazer loves science and doing school visits. Recently, he kicked off an online series helping kids better understand meteorology. He’s going to be doing weather lessons about a variety of topics including wind, temperature, tornadoes and hurricanes. These lessons are geared to children who are 9 years old and older. He welcomes your questions, too. You can e-mail him directly at JFrazer@WKYC.com or you can contact him on Facebook or Instagram at @JasonFrazerTV.
NOTE: Be sure to scroll to the bottom of this story for links to more of Jason's weather lessons.
In today’s lesson, Jason discusses hurricanes. He also teaches how you can make your own hurricane at home, and what steps you need to take to make you’re prepared for a hurricane.
Hurricanes start out as thunderstorms. Eventually, they strengthen into tropical depressions and then into tropical storms. Once they reach winds of 74 mph or higher, they are called hurricanes.
They need several things in order to form -- including water that’s 80° or warmer and no wind shear.
Hurricanes are categorized based on their wind speed using the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Category 1 storms have winds that range from 74 mph to 95 mph. They have dangerous winds that damage the roof of homes and gutters. Large branches can fall onto the ground. Category 5 hurricanes are the highest category for a storm. They have winds more than 157 mph and are capable of destroying homes and forcing buildings to collapse.
Because many of our weather instruments are on the ground, it is important for us to find out what’s happening inside the storm. A brave group of the Air Force called the Hurricane Hunters is tasked with flying into each tropical storm and Hurricane to gather readings.
The WMO comes up with the names of storms each year. The National Hurricane Center tracks each storm that impacts the United States each year. On average, 12-14 storms are named each year. Three of them are considered major hurricanes which are Category 3 or stronger.
A handout for today’s lesson can be found here:
Do you have a question or topic you’d like to see Jason discuss? Send him an email to JFrazer@WKYC.com or send him a message on Facebook.com/JasonFrazerTV
MORE WEATHER LESSONS FROM JASON:
