Return to activity index

Hurricanes are born of tropical waters where trade winds meet and make air swirl. They begin like developing thunderstorms, but the warm ocean gives hurricanes unlimited energy and moisture. A full-blown hurricane is made of many bands of thunderstorms circling around a calm eye.

Topics and Connections:

• Hurricanes
• Graphing and maps

Materials:

• blank hurricane tracking sheets
• hurricane data reports

Directions:

Teacher:

• Explain that a tropical storm is a rotating system of thunderstorms with maximum sustained winds of between 39 and 73 mph. A hurricane has maximum sustained winds of 74 mph or greater.

Students:

• Use the following data to draw maps that track the imaginary "Hurricane Janet". Use different colored lines to indicate when it was a hurricane and when a tropical storm.

Questions to Ask:

• Why are hurricane maps made?
• Can they find the latitude and longitude for their city?

Follow Up:

• Give students one data point at a time, and ask them to predict what the next location will be, knowing only the time of the observation. What areas of the map are in the greatest danger? When should people evacuate?

Return to activity index