South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium produces Coastal Heritage magazine four times a year.
Each issue focuses on a topic relevant to South Carolina citizens.

Coastal Heritage Spring 2006 issue: After the Storm.

Focus Questions:  How will I be affected should a hurricane strike my community?

Use the Curriculum Connection to address these SC Curriculum Standards:

2nd Grade – Identify safety precautions that one should take during severe weather conditions.

4th Grade – Summarize the conditions and effects of severe weather phenomena (including thunderstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes) and related safety concerns.

6th Grade – Summarize the relationship of the movement of air masses, high and low pressure systems, and frontal boundaries to storms (including thunderstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes) and other weather conditions.

Lesson Links…

• Elementary Lesson Ideas: 
  Observing & Inferring: Ask students to describe the difference between observations and inferences and write their ideas on the board. Project the image from page 6 on an overhead (debris from in front of New Orleans home) on the overhead. Ask one student to make an observation about the image and another student to make an inference. Students work in groups of two to make observations about the items in the pile of debris. Based on their observations, students make a list of inferences about the following characteristics of the displaced families: Number of family members in the home, their ages, interests/hobbies, number of bedrooms in the home, etc. Students share their ideas and have a whole group discussion about things the residents have in common. Write their ideas on the board in a list, like the one below.

  Constructing Models:  Collaborate with your art teacher to have students explore the levels of destruction caused by different category hurricane events. Students work in groups to research and design a diorama to represent what their school and surrounding property would look like if struck by hurricanes of different categories.

Be sure to check out NOAA’s National Hurricane Center for information on the
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Here you will find rating scale based on hurricane intensity. (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshs.shtml)

• Middle and High School Grades Lesson Ideas:
  Evaluating and Predicting: Visit FEMA’s Map Information Platform’s on-line mapping tool to create flood and hurricane maps of your area. Type your school or home address into the “Map Viewer” on the right to identify past floods and hurricanes that have historically affected it. Print maps to develop a plan for evacuating if a hurricane strikes your area. Be sure to consider the relief of the landscape, location of major roads and interstates, and location of streams and other bodies of water. https://hazards.fema.gov/femaportal/wps/portal/

  Visit the SEACOOS website for many lesson plans and resources on hurricanes at the “Take Your Students by Storm!” web site http://www.seacoos.org/Community%20and%20Classroom/hurricane-classroom/. Here you will find lessons for tracking hurricanes, making weather instruments, modeling storm surges in coastal communities and more. 

Don’t miss your FREE Forming Hurricane poster made available by COSEE-SE and SEACOOS. Email Carolyn Robinson at Carolyn.Robinson@scseagrant.org or call 843.953.2078 for your copy. Spread the word to your colleagues! 

Research the Topic
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Hurricanes:

• What causes a hurricane? Visit the link for "How Hurricanes form." http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/hurricanes/index.html
• Who makes hurricane forecasts? Visit the National Hurricane Center to learn more. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
• What did Hurricane Katrina look like on August 28th, 2005, before it made landfall on the Gulf Coast? http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/?2005240-0828/Katrina.A2005240.1700.2km.jpg
• How much do I know about hurricanes? Take this NOVA ScienceNOW quiz on hurricanes. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/02.html
• How often do hurricanes strike the US? To learn more about hurricanes, visit this site made by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Science, titled Hurricane Strike. http://meted.ucar.edu/hurrican/strike/
• How do scientists research hurricanes?  Visit this USGS link to learn how scientists learn about and predict hurricanes. http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/

Science - Hurricanes:

• National Geographic Expeditions provides this lesson plan on hurricanes for grades 6-8. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/15/g68/seasstorms.html
• Nature's Fury -National Geographic provides this site on hurricanes http://www.nationalgeographic.com/eye/hurricanes/hurricanes.html
• Investigate this CNN online resource of Hurricane Katrina’s path as she made landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi River, Louisiana. You will find images of New Orleans (LA), Gulfport (MS), Biloxi (MS), and Mobile (AL). http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/hurricanes/interactive/fullpage.hurricanes/katrina.html

Geography - Satellite images of flooding:

• Flooding in New Orleans and vicinity brought to you from the Earth Observatory, a branch of NASA. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17018
• Images of levee breaks in New Orleans: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=13101
• Compare satellite images before and after the hurricane at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/hurricanes/interactive/fullpage.nola.flood/katrina.maps.html
• CNN's satellite images homepage http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/hurricanes/interactive/fullpage.nola.flood/katrina.html

Coastal Heritage is a quarterly publication of the South Carolina Sea Grant. Each issue focuses on coastal resources relevant to the lives of South Carolina citizens. You can access the latest Web version at: http://www.scseagrant.org/library/library_coaher.htm. Subscriptions to Coastal Heritage are free upon request; simply send an email to Annette.Dunmeyer@scseagrant.org or call 843.953.2078.

For further information contact Elizabeth Joyner
elizabeth.joyner@scseagrant.org or (843) 953-2078