By: Heiry Pena & Ashley Sanchez
Recently, the East Coast has been getting hit by multiple hurricanes in the past few months. Several of these hurricanes include: Lee, Ophelia, and Idalia. These hurricanes have been named the most violent hurricanes in the U.S.A since 2018 according to“worlddata.info”, and they’ve all hit the U.S. this year. The first of these hurricanes was Idalia which hit the U.S. from August 24th until September 2nd. Next up being Hurricane Lee, hitting the U.S from September 1st until September 17th. Lastly and most recently, Hurricane Ophelia hit the U.S. from September 20th until September 23rd. These three hurricanes have caused a lot of destruction these past few months and we will get into all of the details within this article.
Starting off with Hurricane Idalia, according to the website “worlddata.info” it was a category 3 hurricane with wind speeds of max 194 km/h and a max diameter of 1000 km. The affected regions of where the hurricane hit were Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Although this hurricane had hit many states, Florida would be the most affected as this was the first state that the hurricane would hit. Florida would experience a record-setting storm surge that was 16ft along their north-west coast as well as heavy flooding that would leave homes, cars, and even roads underwater. Primarily the major damage that was caused was towards agriculture which according to “Fbnewpaper.com” made Florida lose $447 million within that industry. This was devastating for Florida as they rely heavily on agriculture with the biggest impact that this hurricane had on within agriculture was field crops, cattle, and poultry operations. Although the storm happened two months ago, there are still parts of Florida that are still recovering from this horrible hurricane.
At first, Hurricane Lee was expected to pass through New York, but instead it changed course and went further north, with the brunt of the damage hitting Maine. Hurricane Lee was characterized as a Category 5 Hurricane with wind speeds at a maximum of 269 km/h and a diameter of 1296 km (Worlddata.info). In addition to Maine, the hurricane also hit some parts of Canada including Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This storm would bring strong winds as well as coastal flooding and heavy rains to the parts that it did hit. The winds were so strong that they caused many trees and many power outages in the places affected. In Maine, 70,000 people didn’t have power, within Nova Scotia, 120,000 people didn’t have power, and within New Brunswick, 20,000 people didn’t have power as mentioned by “Reuters.com”. One man would die during the storm in Maine after a tree fell on his vehicle. After Lee left, the main goal was to restore power as well as fix up roads as these were affected the most during the storm.
While most recently Hurricane Ophelia was a category 1 hurricane with wind speeds of max 111 km/h and a diameter max of 759 km as reported by “worlddata.info” . The affected areas of where this hurricane hit started in North Carolina, and moved up northward. Ophelia would bring in heavy rains as well as cause major flooding in every state that it went through. In New York City, flooding was so bad that a state of emergency happened which shutdown subways, roads, and airports as stated in “Gothamist.com” but they decided to leave schools open despite all of the flooding happening. In other states such as Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Washington D.C. these floods would only cause problems to the roads, houses and cars. Many of the places affected are now cleaning up or fixing the aftermath of what happened with Ophelia.
Sadly these dangerous conditions caused by even a category 1 hurricane like Ophelia, will continue on and even worsen over time. This is due to the current state of the world with global warming, the longer we don’t approach the problem at hand the more we will see these severe hurricanes, storm surges, and further destruction.