Carve Magazine issue182 Back Issue

It's one of the curious things about surfing: we're one of the few tribes of people that look forward to hurricane season. Aside from us it's pretty much only the meteorologists and climate science geeks that get tumescent when tropical storms are getting all bolshy and throwing their toys out the pram.
Most folks are, of course, rightly worried when they hear the word. Be it hurricane, typhoon or cyclone, depending where you are in the world. FYI it's a hurricane in the Atlantic and NE Pacific, a typhoon in the NW Pacific and a cyclone in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.
The names may differ but one thing binds these cloudy rings of massive power together: the maximum sustained wind speed needs to be over 74 miles per hour to be in the club.
Think about that for a second.
Thats how fast you drive down the motorway, assuming, like I do, that your speedo is a bit conservative ... And that's the qualifying speed. If you've ever been in a convertible on the motorway and own hair you'll know it ain't good.
So it doesn't take a Korean rocket scientist to work out that winds in excess of 70mph hitting anything on land ain't pretty. Not to mention the accompanying deluge; as horrifically illustrated recently by Harvey's liberal dousing of Texas.
These monster storms cause chaos and billions in damage on one hand and give us rubber-suited, selfish, pleasure-seeking weirdos cracking surf on the other. It couldn't be a more skewed balance of good and bad. While hurricanes making landfall delivers scenes from a Hollywood disaster movie if they stay out to sea then it's just wonderful pulses of oceanic energy enjoyed thousands of miles away from the eye of the storm.