Greenburgh Public Library Blog

Weather affects us all, whether we like it or not...

Growing up and living in the northeast, the seasons always fascinated me. What made it change from sweltering heat to blistering cold? In high school, I took some courses in Meteorology which gave me a basic knowledge of why weather changes but this only inspired me to learn more! Fast forward a few years after becoming a librarian, I decided to do some research about why weather happens when it does. What better place to work than a library where access to this information is plentiful. Are you like me and ever wonder why weather changes the way it does and why we get weather events such as hurricanes, polar vortexes, el niño….and so on? In this series of posts I’m going to shed some light on each season and our everyday weather.

The leaves are changing, the air has that crisp biting feeling. Our boots, hats and gloves are ready to go which signals the start of  Fall in New York. Those of us from the North East know what it’s like to go from shorts and flips one month to long pants and boots in the next. Fall can also bring some very unsettling weather. Cool air clashing the with the summer heat never brings calm results. Do you ever wonder why such weather occurrences like hurricanes happen more in the fall? Read on to find out more!

You may think of hurricanes as a summertime occurrence but they actually do start to ramp up and intensify in the fall. Why is this? The simple answer, water temperature. A hurricane is a large circular storm that develops over warm water. They start off as low pressure systems off the coast of Africa with most dying out except for the select few that grow into those monster storms we know and despise. This is why early Fall is the perfect time for a hurricane, especially in the Atlantic. The waters have had three to four months of warming which acts like gasoline to the storm. We always hear about the “hurricane eye” on the news with most of us assuming it’s the strongest part. The eye, although the smallest part, is the weakest and most calm. However, a cruel trick is that the strongest part of the hurricane is right outside the eye known as the eye wall.

Although hurricanes can cause enormous tragedy and destruction, they do serve a purpose:

• Heavy rains can bring relief from droughts in hard hit areas.
• Winds oxygenate the surface area waters breaking up bacteria such as red tide.
• Winds also move the heat from the equator to rectify the heat balance around the world.
• They replenish barrier islands with sediments and sand.
• When winds are blowing they move seeds and spores to new areas which than allows for inland growth in new areas.

Here are three of the most destructive hurricanes to make landfall in the US in the Autumn months:

Hurricane Matthew 2016
Superstorm Sandy in 2012* (Although not technically a hurricane by the time it hit the Atlantic City, NJ.)
Hurricane Wilma 2005
 

To read more about hurricanes and other storms, check out these library resources:

Hurricane’s: Florida’s Nightmare
NOVA: Rise of the Superstorms
Hurricanes