Typhoon 101...What's in a name?

Are you ready for a science lesson? Today’s topic is typhoons –just the name ‘typhoon’ refers to something quite specific though the phenomenon has other names…

“Typhoon is the name for a tropical cyclone with sustained winds of 74 miles per hour (65 knots) or greater in the western North Pacific Ocean. This same tropical cyclone is known as a hurricane in the eastern North Pacific and North Atlantic Ocean, and as a cyclone in the Indian Ocean. (weather.com)”

Since there’s one howling outside as I type I can present you with some first hand information. It is astonishing how strong the wind is. The bursts are so strong sometimes the house actually shakes. We can see sheets of water blowing – I mean being blasted -past the middle school (it is doing a great job of blocking some of the direct hits of water and wind but there’s still plenty moving around it). It’s almost like the wind has picked up the ocean and throwing it at the land.
Fortunately, the Japanese, who’ve had lots of experience with these, have done some things to their homes. First, we have easy to close storm windows – metal sheets that simply slide on the tracks over your windows. The wind and anything that is picked up is held back from the windows. Does make the house quite dark but at night it makes no difference. We kept the windows open so we could watch until it got dark outside. Also, the doors throughout the house have little hooks on the bottom of them. On the floor, against the wall, is the doorstop – complete with a small wire that hooks over the aforementioned hook on the door. Eliminates all the banging doors when the wind hits (works for earthquakes too).
Back to the lesson. They measure the wind speed in knots. Now I saw 75KT and I was thinking 75 miles per hour. However, it’s actually closer to 90 mph when you finish all of the calculations. The storm could easily dump 20 inches of rain – the trains and busses are usually stopped and sometimes certain areas are evacuated.
The weather bureau/government keeps an eye on storms and issues “keiho” (warnings). You listen when they do. They called one this morning at 8:15 and all of the schools were expected to close and send everyone home. What a mess! The kids had just arrived and we turned around and sent them home at 10:00 (it took that long to call all the parents so that there’d be someone home for them). What a day!!! The storm actually started at about 2:00 so it was a good thing we sent them off.