Surrounding the eye is the part of the hurricane with the most intense winds and rainfall called the eye wall, where large bands of clouds and precipitation spiral outwards from the eye wall and are called spiral rain bands (Hurricanes, 2000).
Hurricanes develop through a life cycle of stages form birth to death. It can grow to a more intense stage by achieving a certain sustained wind speed. Hurricanes can often live for two to three weeks. First, they may begin as a cluster of thunderstorms over the tropical ocean waters and once the storm has become a tropical depression, the amount of time it takes to make it to the next stage of a tropical storm, can only take as little as a few hours to as much as a couple of days (Encarta, 2000).
Researchers continue to investigate possible interactions between hurricane frequency and El Nino. El Nino is the occurrence where ocean surface temperatures become warmer tan normal in the equatorial Pacific. In general, warm El Nino events are distinguished by more tropical storms and hurricanes in the eastern Pacific and a decrease in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea (Hurricanes, 2000). El Nino provided the wind patterns that were aligned in such a way that the vertical wind shear was increased over the Caribbean and Atlantic. The increased wind helped to prevent tropical storms from developing into hurricanes and in the eastern Pacific it proved to help create more storms. .
Coastal residents receive warnings to evacuate their homes from on to two days in advance. If your home is near the coastline, pay attention to what the local government and/or police force is recommending. If evacuating your home is necessary:.
u Heed their warning!!.
u Plan ahead where you would go - out of town, designated shelter, etc.
u Take down phone numbers.
u Take a road map in case the weather forces you onto unfamiliar grounds.
u Do not drive over standing water; floods may have damaged the roads.
