Picture yourself going about your regular day, on your home after work and you hear that there’s a storm brewing. There’s still dinner to prepare, get the family fed, kids homework done and maybe some TV time after before bed. Watching the news you see that the storm was upgraded to a tropical depression, you can expect high winds and rain. After hearing this you decide to batten down the hatches so to speak, you close your shutters, get flashlights and maybe shutoff your gas. Feeling sufficiently prepared you go bed satisfied.
Later that night you’re awakened by what you can only describe a roaring sound and you realize that the storm sounds worse, you turn on the TV and the storm’s been upgraded to a tropical storm and now you can expect winds 40 mph winds and it’s only going to get worse. Now picture that it’s 1975 and you live in the Henan Province, where the housing and infrastructure aren’t up to the task that nature has set for them. There are houses today in many developed countries that cannot withstand a hurricane or a typhoon. In 1975 the Chinese and Taiwanese were overwhelmed by nature.
Most people don’t realize that typhoon’s and hurricanes are basically tropical cyclones. Our textbook defines a tropical cyclone as a “large thunderstorm complexes rotating around an area of low pressure that has formed over warm tropical or subtropical ocean water.” (Keller 334) They are named based on strength and location. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA a "hurricanes are located in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Northeast Pacific Ocean east of the dateline, or the South Pacific Ocean east of 160E) and a typhoon is located in the Northwest Pacific Ocean west of the dateline.”
Typhoon...
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...Over China by Ding Yihui, Springer 1994 edition (December 31, 1993), page 229.
Staff Writer (August 4, 1975). "Typhoon batters Taiwan". The Montreal Gazette. p. 2. Retrieved July 19, 2010.
Watkins, Thayer. "The Catastrophic Dam Failures in China in August 1975." The Catastrophic Dam Failures in China in August 1975. San Jose University, n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2013. .
Xinhua. "After 30 Years, Secrets, Lessons of China's Worst Dams Burst Accident Surface."People's Daily Online -- After 30 Years, Secrets, Lessons of China's Worst Dams Burst Accident Surface. People's Daily Online, 1 Oct. 2005. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. http://english.people.com.cn/200510/01/eng20051001_211892.html Ying, Xie. "Dams in Distress." News China. News China Magazine, Oct. 2012. Web. 25 Nov. 2013. .
Author Patrick McCully of Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams (2001), reports that the first dam was built around 3000 B.C. (p. 11).
Tropical waters serve as the perfect breeding and growing place for a hurricane. Storms, such as Katrina, are able to develop because of the availability of water vapor over tropical oceans. This creates the ideal environment for the growth of a hurricane (Ahrens & Sampson, 2011).
The Oroville dam is a rock fill embankment dam, which means, a water barrier that is made with certain materials so that it isn’t prone to erosion or deterioration. Because the material is so heavy due to the need for a secure dam, , it creates a much stronger barrier and base to its foundation. A study was done to see if a rock fill dam is the most stable type of dam to hold the amount of water it is expected to. The study tested different types of dams stability compared to the stability of a rock fill, and ultimately found that the rock fill is completely acceptable and safe (Lei). The Feather River is the only river to feed into the dam, filling it to its total capacity of 3,507,977 acre/ft.
Hurricanes are extremely large area’s of low pressure that are over the ocean in either the North Atlantic ocean, or the eastern North Pacific Ocean. If a hurricane is in the western Pacific Ocean than it is called a typhoon. One in the Indian Ocean is called a cyclone. The danger region of a hurricane is normally in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean. The hurricane season is the six month time period from June-November. The peak month of hurricanes is September.
Director Owen Lammers calls it one of the "largest and most environmentally and socially destructive projects on Earth"(Maier, 1997). One of China’s oldest dreams is becoming its newest reality. Since 1914 the idea has arisen of damming the Yangtze River. China plans to do this with a 600-foot, cement wall which will take eleven years to complete and costs could rise to over 75 billion dollars. The dam is claimed to have many advantages for China and the Chinese. Three Gorges is expected to produce around one-tenth of the nation’s energy, without the use of coal, improving air quality. Also, the natural floods that occur with the Yangtze river will be stopped, supposedly saving thousands of lives in the future. The first thing needed to keep the project going is money, and many United States senators see this as a great opportunity for jobs, but it is also viewed as a good investment. Fortunately, the U.S. Export-Import Bank, (for the first time), "…denied financing solely on environmental grounds"(Giaccia, 1997). These advantages are easily outweighed by the disadvantages of this proposal; this monument threatens the environment, but construction will ensue.
Treaster, Joseph B. "Back-to-Back Punch of Two Hurricanes is Expected to Extract a $40 Billion Toll." The New York Times (2004). Web.
died building this first of the great high dams, and in context the worn phrase
Picture this, you laying on top of you car as you are being violently slung down your street, which was once dry and calm and is now wet and foreign, at an extremely rapid pace. You can’t find your family and all you can do is hope that they haven’t drowned and are able to stay afloat against the violent waters that are angrily attempting to destroy everything in its path. You look around the weather is gray and it’s raining heavily. It is a struggle to breathe between the rapid rain and the violent waters which are attempting to pull you under, forever. Your house no longer exists it is broken down from the pounding waters and fast winds. That is exactly what it would be like if you were in the midst of a hurricane. After hurricanes are over the confusion is crazy, children who had loving families are now orphaned, people become homeless, and people miss certain joys such as walking due to becoming paralyzed.
Hurricanes begin as tropical disturbances in warm ocean waters with temperatures of at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit. These low pressure systems are served by energy from the warm seas. If a storm reaches wind speeds of 38 miles an hour, it is known as a tropical depression. A tropical depression becomes a tropical storm, and is given a name, when its sustained wind speeds top 39 miles an hour. When a storm’s sustained wind speeds reach 74 miles an hour, it becomes a hurricane and earns a category rating of 1 to 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Pottinger, Lori. "Environmental Impacts of Large Dams: African Examples." International Rivers. N.p., 1 Oct. 1996. Web. 04 May 2014.
"1970 Cyclone Changes the Course of History." Innocent Corner. WordPress, 7 Oct. 2010. Web. 1 Dec.
Hurricanes are powerful atmospheric vortices that are intermediate in size. Hurricanes are unique and powerful weather systems. The word “hurricane” comes from a Caribbean word meaning “big wind”. Views of hurricanes can be seen from a satellite positioned thousands of miles above the earth.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND BUREAU OF RECLAMATION. (1985) Hoover Dam. Washingto, D.C., pp. 56.
The paragraphs below will prove that the construction and presence of dams always has and will continue to leave devastating effects on the environment around them. Firstly, to understand the thesis people must know what dams are. A dam is a barrier built across a water course to hold back or control water flow. Dams are classified as either storage, diversion or detention. As you could probably notice from it's name, storage dams are created to collect or hold water for periods of time when there is a surplus supply.
A hurricane is a type of natural disaster that can be harmful and destructive to anything in its way. Every year five to six hurricanes are formed, damaging and destroying people’s homes, landmarks, and anything in its path (“Hurricane”). Before a hurricane is developed it is known as a tropical storm. To be a tropical storm wind speed must be at least thirty eight miles per hour (“Hurricane”). Once wind speeds reaches seventy four miles an hour it can then be classified as hurricane (“Hurricane”). Large scale storms, like hurricanes have a variety of ways to measure the sev...