Category: hurricane

Posted on

This Is Why You Should Put a Quarter on a Cup of Ice Before You Evacuate for a Hurricane

Hurricanes are nothing to mess around with, and it’s vital to be as prepared as possible before an emergency happens. One helpful trick to keep in mind: the “one cup tip.”

The one cup tip tends to go viral on social media every time a major hurricane pops up, since first appearing on Facebook in 2016 around the time of Hurricane Matthew. If you need to evacuate before a storm, this tip helps you figure out whether your food may have gone bad while you were gone.

Just put a cup of water into the freezer, allow it to freeze solid, and then put a quarter on top. Leave it in your freezer.

If you get back and the quarter is still on top of the frozen water, then you know that the water stayed frozen the entire time — which means the electricity stayed on, and the food in the freezer never defrosted, so it should still be safe to eat.

For those of you that are evacuating from the coast, I just heard a great tip. It's called the one cup tip. You put a…

Posted by Sheila Pulanco Russell on Wednesday, October 5, 2016

If, on the other hand, the quarter is now on the bottom of the cup, it’s a sign that the food in the freezer defrosted and then refroze while you were away. That means it’s not safe, and you should throw it away, just to be cautious.

The one cup tip is helpful for any disaster scenario when power outages are a concern — not just hurricanes.

Photo Credit: iStock

Keep in mind that this tip isn’t completely foolproof, however. Frozen water takes quite a long time to melt in the freezer, and ice floats in water. If the power is out for long enough to melt some of the ice but not all of it, the quarter may not change position. When in doubt, throw it out!

The post This Is Why You Should Put a Quarter on a Cup of Ice Before You Evacuate for a Hurricane appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

This Is Why You Should Put a Quarter on a Cup of Ice Before You Evacuate for a Hurricane

Hurricanes are nothing to mess around with, and it’s vital to be as prepared as possible before an emergency happens. One helpful trick to keep in mind: the “one cup tip.”

The one cup tip tends to go viral on social media every time a major hurricane pops up, since first appearing on Facebook in 2016 around the time of Hurricane Matthew. If you need to evacuate before a storm, this tip helps you figure out whether your food may have gone bad while you were gone.

Just put a cup of water into the freezer, allow it to freeze solid, and then put a quarter on top. Leave it in your freezer.

If you get back and the quarter is still on top of the frozen water, then you know that the water stayed frozen the entire time — which means the electricity stayed on, and the food in the freezer never defrosted, so it should still be safe to eat.

For those of you that are evacuating from the coast, I just heard a great tip. It's called the one cup tip. You put a…

Posted by Sheila Pulanco Russell on Wednesday, October 5, 2016

If, on the other hand, the quarter is now on the bottom of the cup, it’s a sign that the food in the freezer defrosted and then refroze while you were away. That means it’s not safe, and you should throw it away, just to be cautious.

The one cup tip is helpful for any disaster scenario when power outages are a concern — not just hurricanes.

Photo Credit: iStock

Keep in mind that this tip isn’t completely foolproof, however. Frozen water takes quite a long time to melt in the freezer, and ice floats in water. If the power is out for long enough to melt some of the ice but not all of it, the quarter may not change position. When in doubt, throw it out!

The post This Is Why You Should Put a Quarter on a Cup of Ice Before You Evacuate for a Hurricane appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

This Is How Hurricanes Actually Get Their Names

Barry? Dorian? Who comes up with this stuff, anyway?

Well, though hurricane names may seem random, there is actually a system to it all.

Hurricanes in the West Indies used to be named after the saint’s day when the storm hit. In the 1900s, an Australian meteorologist decided to name hurricanes after women’s names instead of saints (cause they’re destructive?), and the United States followed suit in 1953. In 1979, men’s names were also added to the list.

But how does a particular hurricane gets its name? The World Meteorological Organization uses an alphabetical list. For the Atlantic coast, there are six lists with 21 names each, one for every letter of the alphabet except Q, U, X and Y. Each list is to be used for one year — every time a storm comes, meteorologists take the names alphabetically on that year’s list. After six years, the naming process starts over with the first list again.

Photo Credit: iStock

The process is the same for hurricanes on the Pacific coast, except that the lists include names for every letter except Q and U.

If there are too many hurricanes in a given year and meteorologists run out of names, then the rest come from the Greek alphabet, starting with Alpha and going down to Omega.

The lists are already established, but there are a few exceptions. If a hurricane is particularly bad, it gets a unique name (like Katrina or Sandy). Also, the World Meteorological Organization sometimes decides to retire names from the list at its annual meeting. The names Florence and Michael, for example, were recently retired.

Photo Credit: iStock

So, now you know! Some future hurricane names to look out for in 2019 include Fernand, Gabriella and Humberto (on the East coast) and Juliette, Kiko and Lorena (on the West coast).

The post This Is How Hurricanes Actually Get Their Names appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Technically, you…

Technically, you COULD stop a hurricane by shooting at it, if you had ~5000 machine guns firing constantly into the wind for 24 hours straight. So there you have it, folks: if you wanna kill a hurricane with bullets, all you need is 24 hours, a fortified brigade of heavy artillerymen, and $20 billion worth […]