Mary Jane's Last Dance (sexandpolitics) wrote,
@ 2008-08-18 03:56:00

Current mood:	nerdy
Entry tags:	hurricane

Hurray hurricane season! Tropical Storm Fay is heading towards where I am, in coastal central Florida. I've gone through this before, but not in Florida -- I weathered Hurricane Isabel in Virginia in '03, and the flooding with Gaston a year later (why those bastards didn't retire the name is beyond me, it left plenty of damage).

I got bored tonight and wondered, what was the largest and/or most powerful tropical cyclone on record? Hint: It's not Katrina or Wilma (though Wilma's officially #2)

It's Super Typhoon Tip, with 190 MPH winds. Think about that thing hitting the mainland. In fact, if theoretically, we placed it in the Atlantic and had it heading towards the mainland, it would have made an impact long before it made landfall -- it was more than a third of the size of the continental U.S.

All right. Enough nerd talk for now. :P

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	sexandpolitics 2008-08-18 07:14 pm UTC (link)
	Not necessarily in damage, but its official barometric pressure at its peak (which really tells a hurricane's intensity) beat Andrew and especially Charley by a long shot. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	glaceon 2008-08-18 07:16 pm UTC (link)
	the 'worst' hurricanes are usually judged by wind speed and how much damage it did and its size as well as death tolls. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

sexandpolitics
2008-08-18 07:55 pm UTC (link)

But not the "most powerful".

Andrew may have made landfall as a Category 5... but so did Hurricane Camille in '69. Technically, Hurricane Camille was more powerful than Andrew, with max sustained winds at 190 MPH, which held during landfall, compared to Andrew's 160 MPH at landfall. It also held the damage record until Andrew came along -- but it also hit Mississippi, rather than the extremely populated peninsula of Florida.

The most powerful cyclone on record, Typhoon Tip, made landfall in Japan as a Cat 1. They rarely make landfall at their prime strength.

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