For more than two days in September 1974, the people of Honduras shut their windows, locked their doors and covered in their homes. Fifi was outside, and they were frightened.
By the time Fifi had left, 8,000 people were dead, Fifi wasn't a pet dog as the name suggests. It was a hurricane, one of the most destructive natural phenomena in the world.
Why do we give human names to storms and hurricanes?
We didn't always. Two hundred years ago, many hurricanes in the Caribbean were named after the saint's(基督徒的)day on which the storm occurred. Later, storms were known by the name of the city where they came ashore.
Meteorologists (氣象學(xué)家) then tried naming storms after the latitude (緯度) and longitude (經(jīng)度) where they occurred.
Finally, in 1953, hurricanes started getting people's names —specifically, female names. Male names were added in 1979.
There are six sets of names for what the experts call “Atlantic tropical cyclones”( 熱帶風(fēng)暴)．
Each list is used every six years and consists of 21 names, starting with every letter but Q, U, X, Y ，Z. the names alternate (交替)between male and female.
A storm won't get a name until its winds reach 39 mph or about 62.4 kph, at which point it becomes a tropical storm. At 74 mph or 118.4 kph it's declared a hurricane.
The 126 names on the list are used only for storms that form off the Atlantic coast of the US. There are separate lists for the Pacific.
So what happens if a hurricane should cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific? It's happened before. The storm just gets a new name and sometimes a new sex.
Max Mayfield is the director of the National Hurricane Centre, headquartered in Miami, Florida. He is in charge of picking new names for storms off the Atlantic coast.
He doesn't do it alone, though. His
counterparts in two dozen other countries in the Caribbean, Central America and North America vote on what names will replace retired names.
小題1:From the first paragraph we can find that ________.
| A．Honduras is a country which was destroyed by Fifi |
| B．Honduras is a country which has no mountains |
| C．Honduras is a country which faces the ocean |
| D．Honduras is a country which lies at high latitude |
小題2:Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．There were no hurricanes two centuries ago. |
| B．The Caribbean is a state of the United States. |
| C．The Caribbean is a place where hurricanes occur often. |
| D．Fifi was formed off the Pacific. |
小題3:The names for storms and hurricanes, as this passage shows，________.
| A．a(chǎn)re set for use. |
| B．a(chǎn)re all from American English |
| C．a(chǎn)re difficult to spell |
| D．a(chǎn)re easy to fix |
小題4:The underlined word “counterparts” in the last paragraph means ________.
| A．citizens holding the same opinion |
| B．people with a similar position or function |
| C．passengers traveling by sea |
| D．a(chǎn)ssistants working abroad |
