Did you know the word hurricane comes from Hurakån, a one-legged Mayan god who summoned the Great Flood from his place in the windy mists?

After writing about the hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones and tornadoes in a recent Sweet Talk, a reader forwarded an article titled, “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Hurricanes” from Discover magazine’s September issue.

The article had me right off with No. 1, as I didn’t know hurricanes got that name from a Mayan god, much less a one-legged one.

Advertisement

Another fact about hurricanes: Did you know they spin counterclockwise north of the equator and clockwise south of it? Makes me wonder if that means areas along the equator are safe from hurricanes, as they wouldn’t know which way to spin?

And it reminds me again, of how I failed on a trip to Australia a few years ago to check to see if the water in the drains actually spun a different direction from what it does here, as I’ve heard told so often.

Apparently it does make a difference for hurricanes. The article did say it didn’t have the same effect for flushing toilets, but I’d like to have noticed for myself.

Although we’ve had a quiet hurricane season so far, “Nearly half of all tropical cyclones occur in September.”

If we could harness the energy of a hurricane, it’d generate some significant power. The average hurricane reportedly releases some 600 trillion watts of heat energy, said to be equal to 200 times the world’s total electrical generating capacity.

The largest known tropical cyclone was in 1979 when typhoon Tip grew to a size that stretched 1,400 miles across portions of the Pacific, covering an area equal in distance from Dallas to Washington D.C.

I’ve written on it before, but the World Meteorological Organization handles naming of hurricanes and prepares a list of names on a six-year rotation. Famous names, like Katrina, get retired and are never used again.

 

I also wrote in a recent Sweet Talk about a local’s suggestion that we need to do more to promote our French heritage in this area.

I was reminded by Al Landry how he and wife, Elaine, at their popular local Lagniappe Too Café, have their daily lunch menu in French for their French-speaking diners. And not only are the menu items in French, but also Al advises they have a listing of various local sites of interest in French.

Al says many of their French-speaking visitors are so pleased with the info, they ask for the menu as a souvenir, which they gladly allow.

 

Maybe this story is timely with all the debate about health care reform in the news. It’s from something sent to me by the folks at Kwik Kopy Printing.

At Thanksgiving dinner, a surgeon listened as the host kept a running commentary while carving the turkey — “How am I doing, Doc? How do you like that technique? I’d make a pretty good surgeon, don’t you think?”

When the host had finished and the slices of meat lay neatly on the serving platter, the surgeon spoke up: “Anybody can take them apart. Let’s see you put it back together again.”

WILL CHAPMAN is publisher of The Daily Iberian.