Associates Press launched a hurricane simulator and gives an impression of the power of these weather phenomenas.
Damage is shown on human buildings and trees. It even visualizes effects of storm surge and flooding.
The Saffir/Simpson Hurricane Scale was first proposed in 1971 by Robert Simpson and Herbert Saffir. A scale was needed by organisations to estimate and communicate in advance the gradations of risk. According to Munich Re in 2005 87% of economic losses from natural catastrophes have been caused by windstorms.
While the Saffir-Simpsons Scale is mostly used in the western hemisphere and depends on sustained wind speed, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology measures gusts to determine the category of a typhoon in Pacific or Indian Ocean.
A Cat 1 hurricane equals roughly a Cat 2 typhoon. The western scale starts with 119 km/h and a Cat 5 hurricane must have more than 250 km/h. The strongest wind gust ever recorded in Australia had 267 km/h, measured during the landfall of cycloone Vance, 2002-04-22.
ExploreOurPla.net has an extension to display near realtime data from current and earlier tropical storms on the map. More info about: tropical-storms-cyclones-depressions-huriccanes.html
Further readings: AOML/NOAA FAQ, BoM Australia, Reference.com and Wikipedia.
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