Blowin in the wind

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Categories: s1 and s2
As often seems to be the case when we are studying natural disasters of some sort, one finds its way into the news. We have been looking at Hurricane Katrina in the last week with s1 and a hurricane is working its way towards the same area, Louisiana, even as we speak. Hurricane Ida is currently crossing the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall by November 10th. This graphic from MSNBC is excellent for emphasising some of the learning points we have been looking at. Watch how the hurricane speed changes as it moves out into the open water and what is expected to happen when it hits Louisiana and moves across Florida. Would you be able to account for the changes? The track also roughly follows the one our wiki map traces- why are hurricanes so common around here? Leading on to tomorrow's lesson, I've embedded a clip. 44 seconds of news footage which refers to Nicaragua being 'slammed' by the storm. I wonder how many students could point out Nicaragua? I am also acutely aware that the only reason I am hearing about Nicaragua is because the USA is next in line. Why do we hear less about storms in Developing countries when they are most likely to be badly affected by them? Finally, if you stayed in one of these countries who, like Nicaragua, were prone to storms, how would you prepare for its arrival. A couple of resources here might help us. Lots of great questions from a very short news article I spotted when my browser opened tonight.

Update: The track for Hurricane Ida is now available in Google Earth, thanks to Google Earth Blog for this.