Lesson One Face to Face with Hurricane CamilleⅠ. Additional Background Information:1. Author: Joseph P. blank: The writer published “Face to Face with Hurricane Camille” in the Reader’s Digest, March 1970.2. Hurricane: A tropical storm in which winds attain speeds greater than 75 miles (121 kilometers) per hour. The term is often restricted to those storms occurring over the North Atlantic Ocean. Incipient（起初的）hurricanes usually form over the tropical Atlantic Ocean and mature as they drift westward. Hurricanes also occasionally form off the west coast of Mexico and move northeastward from that area. An average of 3.5 tropical storms per year eventually mature into hurricanes along the east coast of North America, usually over the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico. A hurricane of this intensity tends to develop an eye, an area of relative calm ( and lowest atmospheric pressure ) at the center of circulation. The eye is often visible in satellite images as a small, circular, cloud-free spot. Surrounding the eye is the eyeball, an eara about 16 kilometers (9.9 miles) to 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide in which the strongest thunderstorms and winds circulate around the storm’s center. Maximum sustained winds in the strongest hurricane have been estimated at about 195 miles per hour (314 km/h).Similar storms occurring over the West Pacific Ocean and China Seas are called typhoons and those over the Indian Ocean are called tropical cyclones.（热带风 暴） 3. Hurricane CamilleIt was the strongest tropical cyclone during the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season. It landed near the mouth of the Mississippi River on the night of August 17, with a recorded sustained wind speed of at least 190 miles per hour (310 km/h). The storm formed on August 14 and rapidly deepened. It scraped the western edge of Cuba. Camille strengthened further over the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall wih pressure of 905 mbar (kPa), estimated sustained winds of 190 miles per hour (305 km/h), and a peak storm surge of 24 feet (7.3 m); by maximum sustained wind speeds, Camille was the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone recorded worldwide, and one of only four tropical cyclones worldwide ever to achieve wind speeds of 190 miles per hour (310 km/h). The hurricane flattened nearly everything along the coast of the U. S. state of the Mississippi, and caused additional flooding and deaths inland while crossing the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. In total, Camille killed 258 people.4. Hurricane BetsyHurricane Betsy formed east of the Windward Islands, and moved north through the island chain as a tropical storm. It traveled north of Nassau, the capital city in the Bahamas, where it stalled for about three hours, allowing its winds to pound the city. On September 7, Betsy continued moving toward the southwest toward extreme southern Florida. It passed over Key Largo at the eastern end of the Florida Keys on September 8, and then continued west along the Keys. Hurricane-force winds were experienced in the Miami area for roughly twelve hours. At its landfall on Key Largo, Betsy had an exceptionally large eye (40 miles (65 km) in diameter). After crossing Florida Bay and entering the Gulf of Mexico, Betsy strengthened, with winds up to 155 miles per hour (250 km/h). It continued northwestward, moving into Barataria Bay on the evening of September 9. It made its second U.S. landfall at Grand Isle, Louisiana, just west of the mounth of the Mississippi River, where it destroyed almost every building, causing the deaths of 74 people.5. Hurricane names Students may wonder why a hurricane is given a woman’s name like Camille and Betsy. For several hundred years, hurricanes in the West Indines were often named after the particular saint’s day on which the hurricane occurred, For example, “Hurricane San Felipe” struck Puerto Rico on 13 September 1876. Another storm struck Puerto Rico on the same day in 1928, and this storm was named “Hurricane San Felipe the second.” Later, latitude-longitude positions were adopted for naming hurricanes, which was convenient and accurate for meteorologists to track them. However, once the public began receiving storm warnings and trying to keep track of a particular storm path, this became complicated and confusing. In 1953, the National Weather Service picked up the habit of naval meteorologists of naming the storms after women. In their opinion, the storms’ temperament seemed female enough, shifting directions at a whim on a moment’s notice. Of course this was biased and unfair. In 1979, male names were inserted to alternate with the female names, to the delight of feminists. Currently, there are six lists of names in alphabetical order used for hurricanes. These lists rotate, one each year; the list of this year’s names will not be reused for six years. The names get recycled each time the list comes up, with one exception: Storms so devastating that reusing the name is inappropriate. In this case, the name is taken off the lis。