Travel Tips For Hurricane Season - #1

From now until November 30, people across the US have to be prepared for the potential of a hurricane either where they live or where they plan to visit. Hurricane season coincides with one of the most active and popular times of the year to travel, leaving many feeling apprehensive about traveling to a location that can be hit by a hurricane, or traveling away from home if they live in an area affected by hurricane season.

The good news is there are some tips that can alleviate the pressure of traveling during hurricane season, and greatly lessen or eliminate the chances of a ruined vacation. Join us this week as we post four key tips to success for staying informed and being prepared.

 

#1 - Buy travel insurance. Travel insurance is a significant factor in salvaging money invested in a trip that’s been interrupted or cancelled. If your flight is cancelled, or the hotel you were planning to stay at is damaged by a storm, or you’re stuck at home bearing down and miss your cruise, you have some recourse. Travel insurance can oftentimes make the difference between having the option to plan a new trip at a later time, and losing thousands of dollars for good.

The Mystery of Double Rainbows

Double rainbows: If the hope of one pot of gold isn't enough, sometimes Mother Nature gives us the opportunity to pursue two. This double-dose of atmospheric optimism is a result of optical effects occurring in tandem.

All rainbows require the presence of the sun and rain in order to form. In order to see a rainbow, the sun must be to the viewer's back, and rain must be falling ahead of the viewer. It doesn't necessarily have to be raining on or near the viewer, but rain must be present ahead of the viewer towards the horizon. And during a particularly lucky scenario, two rainbows will form at the same time.

As sunshine breaks through the clouds and beams towards the raindrops, some of the light encounters the raindrops and bends - called refraction. When the light refracts, the process causes the sunlight to separate into different wavelengths. These different wavelengths correspond to different colors: red and orange correspond to longer wavelengths, while blue and purple correspond to shorter wavelengths. 

The refracted light waves then bounce - or reflect - off of the circular edge of the raindrop, and then they refract again as they exit the raindrop and travel through the air.

Because raindrops are relatively round when the sunlight refracts through them, the visual result is a spherical arc that soars all across the sky. Viewers who are lucky enough to see a whole rainbow will observe a colorful arc spanning the entire Earth, from end to end.

Rainbows remain a relatively rare event as they will only occur when the refracted sunlight strikes the raindrop's edge at the exact angle of 48 degrees. If the angle is less than 48 degrees, then the light will simply pass through the raindrop. Any greater than 48º, then the light reflects straight back out of the raindrop, and no refraction will occur. Without refraction, a rainbow will not form.

When two rainbows form at the same time the first and brighter rainbow is called the primary rainbow. This rainbow is created by the process described above, and only requires the light to reflect off of the raindrop once before refracting out of the raindrop. 

The second and fainter rainbow is called the secondary rainbow. It occurs when refracted light does not escape the raindrop after being reflected the first time. Instead, the refracted light reflects off the raindrop's surface a second time as well, producing a secondary rainbow with its colors reversed compared to the primary rainbow. Unfortunately, fewer light rays are available to undergo the additional refraction process, so the resulting secondary rainbow appears less vivid.

How Much U.S. Summers Have Warmed Since 1970

June is here and one summer statistic has already emerged; the season has been getting hotter across the U.S. since 1970.

Nationwide, the summer warming trend averages out to a little more than 0.4°F per decade since 1970. The places warming the fastest also happen to be some of the hottest places in the country, with a large chunk of the Southwest and all of Texas warming more than 1°F per decade.

Of the 344 climate divisions, which are set by the National Climatic Data Center and divide the country into climatically-similar zones, less than 10 percent have seen a summer cooling trend. In general, every state in the lower 48 has warmed since 1970 and the most recent decade was the warmest on record for the country.

Those trends are consistent with the overall warming that has been observed for the planet as greenhouse gases emitted by humans build up in the atmosphere.

For this summer, the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is forecasting a large "U" of areas where above normal temperatures are more likely running from down the West Coast across the South and back up the Eastern Seaboard.

CPC also forecasts below normal temperatures are likely in the Upper Midwest based overarching climate conditions. While El Niño is likely to form this summer, its impacts on weather patterns in the U.S. won't generally become pronounced until fall.

What’s In A Hurricane’s Name?

Would more residents of New Orleans have evacuated ahead of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 if it had been named Kurt?  A published study suggests they would have, perhaps reducing Katrina's death toll of more than 1,800.

Because people unconsciously think a storm with a female name is less dangerous than one with a masculine name, those in its path are less likely to flee, and are therefore more vulnerable to harm.  As a result, strong Atlantic hurricanes with the most feminine names caused an estimated five times more deaths than those with the most masculine names, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When the National Hurricane Center began giving storms human names in 1953 with Alice, it used only women's. The first "male" Atlantic hurricane was Bob, in 1979.  Hurricane names currently alternate between male and female. Among those the World Meteorological Organization has chosen for 2014: Dolly, Josephine, and Vicky.

Based on the analysis of Atlantic hurricanes from 1950 to 2012, when 94 made landfall, the researchers found that names of less severe storms didn't matter. Whether people took precautions or not, the death toll was minimal and no different for male and female names.  But for strong hurricanes, the more feminine the name - as ranked by volunteers on an 11-point scale - the more people it killed.

When judging a storm's threat, people "appear to be applying their beliefs about how men and women behave," said co-author Sharon Shavitt, a professor of marketing at Illinois. "This makes a female-named hurricane, especially one with a very feminine name such as Belle or Cindy, seem gentler and less violent."

A spokesman for the National Hurricane Center declined to say whether scientists there find this analysis credible. But "whether the name is Sam or Samantha," Dennis Feltgen said, people must heed evacuation orders.