Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society - Climate Science ...

90 HURRICANES: THEIR NATURE AND IMPACT ON SOCIETY
0 the eye
::::::::\ Tropical Storm
:::. Winds
Soffir/ Simpson Level I
Soffir/Simpson Level 2
Figure 3.17 Use of the Saffir/Simpson scale to delineate changes in storm intensity
over time
Tropical cyclones, of course, are not points or line segments but have areas
of influence. A more informative method of presenting movement over time is
to display the areas of wind speeds, <strong>and</strong> the region of different intensities of
hurricane force winds, using the Saffir/Simpson scale. Figure 3.17 schematically
shows how such a presentation would appear for a storm that evolves
from a tropical storm (at time 0) to a hurricane level 2 (at time 36 hours). The
National Hurricane Center routinely produces such maps, delineating tropical
storms, hurricane, <strong>and</strong> intense hurricane strengths. Figure 3.18 shows such a
map for Hurricane Fran in 1996.