Hurricane

[Omniscient]

Now I just have to share this with you!

As some of you might now, I somehow doubt it, Sweden has recently been hit by a hurricane. The south-western areas got most of it.
For those of you who are clueless about Sweden, click here (http://www.nationsonline.org/map_small/sweden_small_map.jpg). It's the country inside the red square:p
But, are there more people than me who find things like natural disasters fascinating? That nature can do such extensive damage?

On my way to school, some road signs had actually been "torn" apart by the wind! Pieces of them were laying several meters away, the cool thing about that is, road signs are made of metal.
And trees were laying on the ground, the busride actually took about 45 minutes longer than it should because random pieces of everything was in the way...
But the trees were the coolest, almost a whole forest had been hit, and most of its trees were scattered around it. And trees are big things, imagine the sight of about a hundred of them laying scattered around the ground, close. And a forest only consisting of think logs sticking out of the ground. And I could hear the trees at night when it was storming, I could hear the branches break off. Rather soothing actually.
But there was no rain, thankfully, so no flooding...

They've actually started to cut down trees here, so that we don't get any horrible accidents. Because they say that the real storm might be over, but there's still going to be some strong winds.

This was one of those rare occasions when the storm actually made it's way across Sweden, and Motala (where I live, somewhere in the middle-south) got it's share of it.
A little boy, nine years old, got crushed by a tree. Sadly, when they got him to the hospital it was too late. I really feel sorry for him and his family...
But the scary thing is, it happened about 900 meters from where I am right now...

Although it was rather hurricane-ish here, the more southern parts of Sweden got the most of the hurricane. Entire roofs got swept away there, even houses in a few cases.

So... Does anyone else find these things fascinating? Or am I just being morbid?

Sorry if I got too random somewhere or ranted away:p

[Big_fat_kiddo]

You know I find it interesting, since we got parts of that storm aswel.
But what's realy odd, there aren't supposed to be hurricanes over here.

[Seth]

Yeah, despite the loss of life and the suffering of the survivors, disasters like hurricanes are fascinating. Sometimes even more interesting are the reactions of the people caught in the storms. You always have some that stick around regardless of the warnings they get, which I just don't get at all.

A hurricane w/o rain, that's a first for me. I didn't think that was even possible. Don't hurricanes get their energy from the warm water they move over? Every hurricane I've been aware of in the U.S. always broke up into smaller weaker storms after they hit land. That storm in Sweden must have been serious when it was over the water.

Seth

[Calguy]

I don't talk much around here but I have to agree with you on the fascination of disasters like hurricanes. Thats one of the reasons why I chose my majors too. Always been interested in natural disasters, mostly earthquakes (helps I live in California), but also volcanoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and whatever else there is that could eventually cause damage. Don't think its morbid at all, theres always a curiosity of horrific incidents just like seeing a bad accident or something.

Also, just looked up your storm in question, they termed it as a European windstorm which occur in the winter months across the North Atlantic heading towards northwestern Europe. They usually head north to Norway but can veer into more southern countries. They can reach hurricane-force winds which is why they tend to be confused with a hurricane. Whereas hurricanes are more associated with the tropics and warmer months.

[Omniscient]

They can reach hurricane-force winds which is why they tend to be confused with a hurricane.

They were hurricane-force, the "limit" for when wind is called a hurricane is 33m/s, these were around 40-45m/s. And on the coast they reached 49m/s.

[Big_fat_kiddo]

We have those storms here in The Netherlands too, but they're called "South-West" Storms, because they come from that direction, they usually reach up to 140km/h (89miles/h or 39m/s)

They're normal around this time of year except for this year.
We've had about 9 of them already, since early December 2006.

[Icarus]

We must have gotten the dregs of that then, we had a storm most of yesterday, they closed off large portions of the highstreet in town because lights and tiles were flying off the buildings, and all roads with scaffolding and other dangerous buildings were closed off. Across the country theres been 13 deaths so far I believe as well.

[Omniscient]

We must have gotten the dregs of that then, we had a storm most of yesterday

They actually think it's a new one, according to the news here.

[Icarus]

Oh great, thats not good :/