Nature's Oddities & Furies part 2

Nature's Oddities & Furies continued

Fire

A burning that is rapid enough to produce heat and light. Fire is both useful and destructive. The rapid burning of matter is called combustion. Fires can start from almost any natural disaster such as earthquakes, volcanos, and especially lightning. To us, fires are unpredictable, but to Nature they are not, for they are magnificent in their power to restore life itself. Today the National Park Service knows more about fire ecology and lets fires started by lightning burn for 2 weeks as long as no life or private property is threatened. Wild Fires are fires set by nature herself. Fire Whirls are spinning, vertical funnels of super heated air, much like a tornado of flames. Fire Storms are wild fires burning out of control. Every 30 seconds, a fire storm releases heat equal to the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Some of the greatest fires are:

1666 - London: "The Great Fire" burned for 5 days, destroying more than 13,000 buildings.
1871 - Chicago: Fire burned over about 3 1/2 square miles, leveling 17,450 buildings and took about 250 lives.
1906 - San Franciso: Fire followed earthquake, killed about 500 people and did about $500,000,000.00 in damage.
1918 - Cloquet, Minnesota: Forest fire destroyed or damaged 25 towns and killed 400 people.
1923 - Tokyo and Yokohama: Large parts of both cities destroyed by fire following earthquake.
1988 - Yellowstone National Park: Lightning triggers 2 large fires (people added 5 more) and a fire storm raged.

Fires . . .

Friend or foe?	Nature's friend.
Man's enemy.	A fire storm blazes.

Did you know: A large poled pine, nick-named "Fire Weed", Yellowstone's dominant tree, depends on fire to open the cone holding its seed for self-planting. Yellowstone National forest is programmed by Nature to burn once every 200 years. There are areas in the southwestern United States that burn every 20 years just as nature planned.

There is an unknown hero

in every fire.

Flood

The rising of a body of water so that it overflows onto land that is normally dry. Rainy Season Floods occur most frequently during spring (also called the rainy season). Flash Floods come with little or no warning and are violent. Tidal Wave Floods are violent and caused by; undersea earthquakes, volcanic explosions, hurricanes, and typhoons. Storms during high tides can also cause destructive floods. The Mississippi river has flooded more than 50 times within the past 100 years.

Floods . . .

overflow their boundaries,	destroy civilization,
move vehicles,	and drown surrounding areas.

Did you know: The Hwang Ho river in China flooded in 1931 and killed an estimated 3,700,000 people. In 1936 a flood, from the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, reached the tops of 3-story buildings in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Floods can move as fast as 100 mph.

Hail

Lumps of ice that fall from thunderstorm clouds. Individually, each lump is called a hailstone. Hailstorms occur during warm months in temperate climates, but are rare in the tropics. Hail is formed in the upper part of a cloud. Hailstones are made of concentric layers of hard ice and soft, milky-looking ice. The layers are built up as the hailstone collects water droplets and snow crystals that freeze to it under varing conditions. Hailstones vary in size, but are an average of one-half inch in diameter. Eventually, the hailstones become so heavy that they fall to the earth.

Note: Ice pellets called sleet resemble very small hailstones, but are frozen rain. Sleet forms near the ground in cold weather.

Hail . . .

ranges in size,	mutilates foilage,
destroys private property,	and can cause death.

Did you know: Hailstones that are repeatedly carried back up through the cloud by rising air currents can grow as large as grapefruits.

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