Hurricanes
By: Alan Stuto
College Now Course - SCI 1

Over the past few months in my College Now science course; issues and adventures, we have had numerous discussions and assignments. One discussion that has had an impact on me the most was our Hurricane discussions.

Hurricanes was the first topic that we discussed in this course. I believe that it stood out the most in my mind, not only because it was the first thing we had done, but it opened my mind to think "what if', and how I would prepare for one.

I remember very vividly our first discussion, which took place on September 20th, 2005. "What is the principal cause of a Hurricane?" As we discussed this topic, I learned that the sun is the main cause of a Hurricane, as well as the process of evaporation, the Coriolis effect, which is when the cloud mass begins to rotate counter clockwise, and large super cells of clouds that form up to 60,000 feet.

Over the next two weeks we then discussed some more history about Hurricanes, such as, how hurricanes have cycles of approximately occurring every fifteen to twenty years, and the most abundance of hurricanes that had hit the United States was in the year 1995, with nineteen. We also learned that if there was ever a crisis or a disaster from a hurricane, two important factors a state would need, were communication and evacuation of the site where the hurricane was targeted to hit.

In closing, this course opened my mind to think about real situations in the world today instead of hibernating to the world of Staten Island. The topic of hurricanes started this thought process, and with numerous hurricanes hitting the coast of Florida and Louisiana, they opened my mind to start thinking, that if this had happened here in Staten Island; what would I have done, and where would I have gone to be safe?