What is a tornado?
A tornado is a rotating column of air from a thunderstorm to the ground.The most violent have winds of more than 400 kilometres per hour.Almost all of them occur in the US,in the area fromTexas in the southeast to South Dakota in the north.
Tornadoes can pick up cars,trains and even houses and put them down in the next steet--or enen in the next town.They can take the fur off the back of a cat and the feathers off a chicken.They can destory houses,but leave the furniture inside exactly where it was.On average,there are 800 tornadoes in the US each year,causing about 80 deaths and 1,500 injuries.The worst tornado of all time occurred in 1925,affecting three US states:Missouri,Illinois and INdiana.By the time it ended,more than 700 people had been killed and 2,700 had benn injured.
What is a hurricane?
Hurricanes are strong tropical storms,and they usually occur in the souther Atlantic Ocean,the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.There are violent winds of 120 kilometres per hour or more,which cause huge waves,heavy rain and floods.There are on average six Atlantic hurricanes each year and they usually affect the east coast of the US from Texas to Maine.
The worst hurricane disaster of all time occurred on the 8th September 1900 in Galveston,Texas.Winds of 200 kilometres per hour and five-metre high waves hit the city,The disaster killed 6,000 people in a population of 37,000 and destoryed 3,600 buildings.
An extraordinary event
This is a story about the 1900 Galveston hurricane.
Charles Coghlan was a nineteenth-century Irish actor who went to live in Canada.He then moved to New York,where he became famous.By the late 1890s,he had moved to Galveston,where he died in 1898,a year before the hurricane struck.The cemetery where Coghlan was buried was destoryed by the hurricane and Coghlan`s coffin ended up in the sea.
Eight years later ,the coffin was found by fishermen in the sea near his home on PRince Edward island in the east of Canada.The Gulf Stream had carried it 3,000 kilometres up the eastern US coast to Prince Edward Island.Coghlan travelled back to Canada--after he had been buried in Texas!