Weather in the movies.

I was able to watch not just one movie but two the two titles are as follows. The day after
tomorrow, and 2012. Both these movies portray many weather phenomena. It was very hard to
choose what I should talk about but there is one scene in the movie The Day After Tomorrow
that really got me interested and not its not the hail seen at the beginning. What caught my eye
was the formation of 3 hurricanes before the actual things started happening in new york city.
The way you can clearly identify these were hurricanes were due to the large circular clearance
surrounded by enormous amounts of clear clouds. So that got me thinking about how
hurricanes work and the process of their formation.
Let's start off with the basics of what a hurricane is. According to the National Ocean
Service a hurricane is a type of storm called a tropical cyclone, which forms over tropical or
subtropical waters, The definition goes into further detail as to explain that these tropical
cyclones are normally rotating low-pressure weather systems that have thunderstorms but no
clear fronts. The first stage of what might become a hurricane normally starts as a series of
thunderstorms, these storms start brewing normally from the west african side of the ocean
since its picks up energy from warm waters there. These thunderstorms over the atlantic get
called tropical storms. For a tropical storm to be labeled a hurricane it has to exceed the wind
speed of 74 miles per hour. What causes the wind to speed up? You may ask. Scientist call the
force that spins the air, the Coriolis effect. Not only does that help it but there is a few other little
things that cause the wind to pick up and start spinning, The other forces needed are as follows.
Pressure gradient force, Centrifugal force and lastly and I consider very important friction. All of
these forces are very clearly described in the NSF University of Rhode Island's web page about
Hurricanes. (I will post a link to this at the end). The pressure gradient force tries to move air to
higher pressure to lower pressures, Well where would this be at? The Eye of the storm. Since
the center of a hurricane has the lowest pressure. The pressure gradients tries its best to push
higher pressure to the center, but thanks to the coriolis effect the air is deflected to the right (Up
in the Norther hemisphere) This repeats in a counterclockwise motion causing the spin which
interns the speed of the wind. Now that Ive given a quick review of what a hurricane is I need to
explain the different levels of them. Like I said earlier a tropical storm becomes a hurricane
when it hits 74 mph winds, this is a category 1 hurricane, When the wind speed hits 96 mph we
achieve category 2. Followed by category 3 at 111 mph, category 4 at 130 mph and last on the
scale category 5 at a wapping 157 mph winds. You can find more detail about this on the
National Hurricane Centers website.
Now with all that information given to you, I want to quickly go over the movies
representation of the hurricane. In the movie you only see the formation of the eye of the
hurricane very briefly, but there is one huge difference between the tropical hurricanes we see
and the one in the movie. The hurricane in the movie is completely opposite from that of our
hurricanes in the sense that it is a giant cold front that freezes anything it falls on. The only thing
that seemed to stay consistent with the science was the idea of the calm eye of the storm. I
personally think that the movie is a huge exaggeration of what could occur if global warming
keeps happening. There is some things in the movie that could be serious and would happen
but to a smaller scale.

National Hurricane Center: Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php