INTRODUCTION. HORRIBLE GEOGRAPHY

In this and other entries we can find exercises and texts taken from the excellent serie of books "Horrible Geography", published by Scholastic Children's books and writen and drawn by Anita Ganeri and Mike Philips.

(I hope that the legal owners of the copyright will understand that this blog is only for educational purposes)


. STORMY WEATHER

Are you brave enough to make a forecast? Look at this drawing and try to do it. Find a weather map for tomorrow here





Meteorologists use weather maps to plot the weather and to work out what it's going to happen. Make your forecast and check it, wait a few days and see. And remember that even the experts sometimes get things wrong.


. What on earth is a hurricane?

They're hair-raising hurricanes in the Atlantic, thundering typhoons in the Pacific, savage cyclones in the Indian Ocean, and in Australia they're known as willy-willies. But call them what you like, they all mean exactly the same thing. Furiously spinning superstorms which rage across tropical seas. HURRICANES ARE THE MOST DANGEROUS STORMS ON EARTH! They claim more lives and cause more damage than all other stormy weather put together.

A hurricane begins over the sea. But it's a bit choosy about which sea it picks. It must be nice and warm and humid. Somewhere truly tropical, like the Caribbean Sea. The mixture of warmth and water vapour's vital - it's the violent hurricane's ideal lunch, and it's what makes clouds and rain. By the way, a hurricane sucks up about two BILLION tonnes of moisture a day, then chucks it all back down as rain!

Inside a hurricane

1 Warm sea heats air above it. Warm, moist air rises quickly...

2 ...creating low pressure at the surface. More air sweeps in, then starts spiralling upwards.

3 The Earth's rotation makes the rising air twist round a centre called the eye.

4 Rising air cools, condenses and makes towering thunderclouds and torrential rain.

5 The hurricane spins away. Byeee!

Hurricane winds blow anticlockwise north of the equator and clockwise to the south.

Are there now hurricanes over the Atlantic ocean? Visit the American web-site of the National Hurricane Center


. Make a brief report about hurricane Mitch that devastated Central America in 1998