|
|
Hurricane Heather
Off the coast of Africa, peculiar conditions of wind and sea produce a certain effect on low pressure systems; it causes them to go berserk. While scientifically, this process is a way for heat energy to be transported from the tropics to the poles, we call them hurricanes.
I have seen a comparison of hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and nuclear weapons. Tornados are counted as the least destructive: they damage an area many yards wide, but their habit of touching down, running on the ground for a mile or two, then rising back into the air cuts down on the actual area that is devastated by them to a few acres. Of course, they often come in bunches…
Earthquakes and nuclear weapons were on a par with each other for initial destruction. Both damage many square miles around ground zero. Nuclear weapons have those nasty, secondary effects, like fallout and radiation that increase the area and duration of damage somewhat. Generally, though, the actual damage area of earthquakes and A-bombs can be measured in hundreds of square miles.
Then there are hurricanes. They can be well over 200 miles wide, and travel thousands of miles across the surface of the earth. They put out as much energy in a short period of time as an A-bomb, and the thing lasts for days! Although often composed of winds of less than 100 miles per hour, they can generate tornados with winds of 200 miles per hour, and even outside of the tornados, the wind will often gust another 50 miles per hour to the sustained wind.
Hurricanes are unpredictable; in 1938 one hit New England, damaging New York City and Providence Rhode Island. At the time, few preventive measures were taken because "hurricanes never hit New England". I’ve seen reports that at least one hurricane hopped on the Gulf Stream and traveled around it to old England, where it was still potent enough to do damage. Hurricane Hugo in 1985 passed back and forth along the coast, passing going eastward, stopping off Apalachicola, Florida to gain strength, then coming back to the west brushing the entire Gulf coast before hitting Texas. Hurricanes do weird things: Danny in July of 1997 wobbled back and forth and finally moved into Mobile Bay. At one point, the radar showed it having two eyes, at another time the eye disappeared, and then reformed several miles to the east, at which point the storm stalled and dropped twelve inches of rain over south Alabama during a six-hour period. Hurricane Frederick in 1979 had an eye that was unusually large. When it made landfall, the eye began to deform into an elongated oval. Then the oval started to spin, so some places went into and out of the eye several times. Although Hurricane Andrew is supposed to have been the most devastating hurricane ever, I have seen the damage after Hurricane Camille, and don't want to see anything worse. The persistent winds were estimated at 200 miles per hour… tornado strength. There are still vacant lots along the Mississippi Coast that became empty in one night. Mobile is 60 miles from Biloxi, and we had more damage then than we had from Hurricane Iris in 1995, and it passed within twenty miles of Mobile. The tidal surge in Camille was estimated at twenty-five feet high, but Frederick and Danny both sucked the water out of Mobile Bay, exposing the muddy bottom, so there was no storm surge.
Hurricanes do damage through several means: sustained wind, gusts and tornados, tidal surge, rain, and lightning. These often produce secondary damage from windborne debris, falling structures or trees, flooding, and fires.
The definition of a hurricane is a cyclone with sustained winds of seventy-five miles per hour (120 kph). To understand what this means, get on a local interstate highway, and travel at 75 mph (or the legal speed limit, if lower) and put your hand out the window. Imagine this pressure all over your body, your house, everything. These winds pick up debris and “throw” it at anything in the wind’s path. This flying debris is the primary cause of broken windows. The wind whips trees back and forth, damaging foliage, and breaking limbs or trunks, creating more flying debris. After Frederick, it was found that most of the trees had been stripped of their leaves, the leaves shredded, and deposited as a layer of mulch all over everything (the ground, houses, cars, etc.). The constant wind pressure, combined with the softening of rain-soaked soils, causes trees to fall. Some fall violently, crushing anything underneath, others just lean over like they are tired. This wind will get under shingles, stripping them off the roof and sending them flying. Once this happens, the torrential rain quickly runs down into the building, causing water damage. The wind gusts also do this. This wind is capable of damaging light structures, and maybe even shattering glass. Gusts have been known to blow vehicles off the road, and in Frederick, one caused a semi to lose control. Sometimes, a sufficiently powerful gust will rip the entire roof, shingles, decking, and rafter, off a house and “throw” it into a neighbor’s yard.
Oddly enough, the trees act as protection from these winds. Houses with trees in the yard suffer less wind damage than those without, although the possibility of having one of those trees fall on the house does have its’ own drawbacks. I have been out in a hurricane, hearing the wind roaring above the trees, seeing the clouds zipping along overhead, and yet the wind on the ground in the heavily-wooded neighborhood was not blowing hard enough to do anything but move the lightest objects. The tops of the trees, however, were whipping back and forth, and you had to watch for falling limbs.
The trees offer no protection from tornados, however. There are still places in Mobile where you can trace the path of tornados spawned by Hurricane Frederick. Now cleared, just after the storm they were 200-foot wide areas filled with man-high stumps of trees. Tornados probably do the most physical damage in a hurricane, since they can pick up cars, trees, houses, just about anything. It’s dark, it’s cloudy, and it’s almost impossible to see them coming in the driving rain. Hurricane Andrew showed evidence of something called a microburst: comparatively narrow areas where the strength of the wind increases dramatically. The illustration I saw of the effect showed four houses. It looked like some monster stuck his giant clawed paw into the earth, and scratched three paths of destruction, laying waste to three of the houses. Only the first, third, and fourth houses were destroyed; the second house, while it sustained damage (hey it was in a hurricane, after all) was still standing.
In Camille, the storm surge was the big killer. Hurricanes pile up water ahead of them and the low pressure near the center actually lifts the water into a “mound”. The height of this mound is exaggerated when the hurricane gets into the shallow coastal waters. In Camille, this “mound” was over 25' tall. If you live in a coastal city, get a contour map and see how far inland you have to go before the ground is over 25' above sea level. If you live in an inland city, get a contour map of your area and see how many places would be underwater if a nearby river rose 25'. Actually, many of you probably know from experiencing a flood what happens. In Mobile, it takes the ground three miles to get above 25'. Biloxi was on a peninsula with a bay on the side away from the Gulf, and very little of it ever attained the elevation of 25'. The storm surge moves ashore at the speed of the hurricane itself (15-25 mph), and acts like a flash flood. The water pushed ahead of the hurricane may come into shore in waves, so you are treated to consecutive miniature tsunami washing through.
The wind on the so-called northeast quadrant is worse than anywhere else in the hurricane, because you add the motion of the storm to the wind speed. This is also where the worst storm surge occurs. This is actually a misnomer, since it the most damage will happen on the right-hand forward section of the hurricane as you face its direction of movement. Along the Gulf Coast, they are usually heading north when they hit land, so…
To top it off, the rain falls in quantities measurable in inches per hour. Hurricanes are large structures, and it often rains for some time before the primary storm reaches land. This rain saturates the ground, and all the additional water just runs off into the drainage system instead of soaking in. This water runs downhill until it hits the storm surge running uphill. Then everything backs up. Drainage basins overflow, watersheds flood, and places above the storm surge begin to flood as millions of gallons of water try to go through drainage systems that cannot empty because the storm surge has them full already. Sanitary sewers may break in places where the ground has washed away from them, and either the raw sewage flows into the drainage system, or the floodwater runs into the sanitary system, sometimes both. And the rain keeps falling. In the gusts, the rain falls sideways, but in the little lulls (a hurricane is built like a galaxy, with spiral arms of great wind and destruction, followed by gaps of lower wind and less destruction), it comes down in almost constant torrents.
Lightning causes relatively minor damage except for one thing; the wind and rain hamper firefighting crews from reaching any fire started by the storm. Rising water tables cause buried fuel tanks, septic tanks, and cemetery vaults to “float” to the surface on the saturated ground. This adds contamination to the danger.
The problems in building a hurricane in Champions come down to trying to describe exactly what the hurricane does. Sure, the rain and stuff is Change Environment, the wind is Telekinesis, and the lightning a Killing Attack, but what about the storm surge? Is it a separate attack, or is it part of the TK? Tornados could be classified as Area Effect TK, but they could also be described as a Continuing Effect Explosion, or even an Area Effect Cumulative Major Transformation Attack: House>Rubble. For that matter, the whole hurricane could be considered a Transformation Attack: City>Major Disaster Area, Takes Extra Time.
What is the Speed of a natural disaster? A-bombs and earthquakes have relatively short durations, disregarding fallout and contamination, but a hurricane lasts for days. The thing is, so much damage is happening simultaneously, that I think it must be a 12. For the basic storm, 88000" Radius Affect Environment: Clouds, Wind, and Rain, Hole in the Middle, Continuous, Uncontrolled, at 0 Endurance, Persistent seems to be the best shot. It does not really represent the effects exactly; often the storm system, instead of being a true circle, more resembles a "6" or a "9" when viewed from a weather satellite. The eye is often slightly offset from the geographical center of the storm, but this really makes little difference in the long run. The rain and cloud cover will also reduce visibility in the normal light and infra-red spectrum, cut down on hearing perceptions, and eliminates most smells, but instead of buying Darkness, these effects have been covered by Adders under the 5th Edition rules for Change Environment. Basic CE will give a -1 to perceptions, Combat Value, Skill Rolls, and so forth. Here I’ve increased Sight and Hearing to --3 and Smell to --4. I’ve reduced Flight and Running by -- 5” each (and a man is doing well if he can move 1” a segment in a full strength hurricane). Another adder allows the CE to do damage, so I have it doing 6 points of damage (which I would roll 1d6 for). This is to represent rain, wind, and whatever damage all through the storm.
There is also an Adder for Telekinesis, so I’ve added a little to represent the wind’s ability to move things around even at the edges of the storm. An "iffy" proposition is soil saturation. Heavy rain saturates the soil, making more water run off the surface, and reducing the stability of the ground. This seems to be an inherent disadvantage of the soil (Takes a PD Drain from persistent rain, and becomes less permeable), so I think it can be ignored when figuring point costs. Anyone wanting to try and guess at the game mechanics let me know what you come up with. I have the CE reducing a character’s OCV by –2, which may be misleading: I figure that both OCV and DCV are reduced for attacker and target, but that all but the –2 are balanced out. Some powers will not work in a hurricane: most muscle powered or thrown weapons will be thrown about by the wind, and some energy weapons will be absorbed by the rain reducing their power. An electrical attack when everyone is ankle-deep in water might be interesting, and I wonder about a speedster running at the speed of sound through an atmosphere that is full of water and debris. Saturated soil will not be a good support for those heroes with Density Increase or Growth (besides the larger character presenting a broader surface to the wind), and Desolids and teleporters who use their powers might find it hard to locate a “clear” spot in which to solidify or “land”.
The wind is the hardest thing to describe. You would think that a certain Strength Telekinesis would explain it, but hurricanes are notoriously unpredictable in the amount of damage they leave behind. Two nearly identical buildings will suffer totally different amounts of wind damage: the plate glass window in one building shatters, but the one across the street is unharmed (glass windows are seldom broken by just the wind; as I said it's usually airborne debris or the tidal surge that breaks windows. I have sat through five hurricanes, and never lost a pane of glass). I considered a new modifier, Cumulative Damage, where something took an extra d6 of damage per hex of area. This is because a man can, with difficulty, actually walk around in hurricane winds (I have done it; I don’t recommend it). It seemed that big, old, oak trees were pushed over by the storm, while smaller popcorn and dogwood trees were stripped of their leaves and suffered some broken branches. The steady wind will pick up things of less than a few pounds easily, but will pick up larger, heavier objects also if they have sufficient surface area for the wind to get under. For example, lightweight metal storage buildings are usually reduced to scrap, heavier, plywood sheds end up kindling, steel and aluminum carports or canopies learn how to fly, but swing sets come through fine if you take the swings off (unless a tree or a canopy or a storage shed fall on it), and 200-pound concrete bird baths get by just fine, even though they weigh less than either the wood shed or the canopy. It seems to me that several things are in action here: TK, a Power Blast, and Transform. First is the TK: if you translate the points in 75 miles per hour at a speed of 12 into points of Strength, you end up with a 35 STR (7d6). This is a little strong, so I reconsidered and halved that to 3½d6. Anyone who is familiar with a hurricane and Champions will probably disagree with this, but bear with me, because it only covers the sustained wind, not gusts or tornados. Anyway, 17 Strength Telekinesis, Explosion that has 1 level of extended area, Selective Target, 2 Levels of Megascale (Replacing Diminishing Effect borrowed from Steve Long's write up on nuclear weapons), Hole in the Middle (Fixed Size is sufficient for our purposes, although the size of the eye actually varies somewhat), Continuous, Uncontrolled, at 0 Endurance, Persistent will handle most of the wind effects. It should strip leaves, throw lawn chairs, and blow the rain so that it falls horizontally (rainwater at over 75 mph stings, by the way), but the Selective modifier makes it necessary to roll against all targets. This brings up the OCV of a hurricane. Even if the hurricane has an OCV of 0, it would hit DCV 3 objects on 8-, with larger, lower DCV objects hit on a better roll. This almost makes sense, and would seem to eliminate the need for a Cumulative Damage modifier. The gusts, perhaps increasing the sustained wind by another 25-50 miles per hour, are more likely represented as a Power Blast. Again, it is difficult to put a DC on this, because damage in a hurricane is so unpredictable. The thing to do is figure that there is an 8- chance that a gust will hit a particular area in any segment. With the same modifiers as the TK, this becomes a very random effect. Adding Double Knockback may also be more realistic, but my version didn’t do that. Remember that the EBs will do damage to things, and the TKs will pick them up and throw them around. You might have a Random Object Table with a chance for each character in the storm getting hit by something.
Roll Description Damage
16+ Nothing (lull in storm) 0
15-- miniscule item: stick, plastic flower pot, 1d6
toy, pebbles, other tiny debris
11-- small item: clay flower pot, small branch, 2d6
misc. debris
8-- medium item: lawn chair, garbage can, 4d6
dog house, barbeque grill
6-- larger item: awning, large barbeque grill, 6d6
tree branch, newspaper box
4-- big item: several square hexes of 8d6
building, whole shed, car, roof, tree
Note that on 11+ it is unlikely that a human will be hurt, but from there down it can get deadly. There are also charts in the book on vehicles and their weights, and you should figure that any thrown object will do at least as much damage as the STR required to pick it up. You might also consider the weight per hex of an object: since the TK is Area Effect, you might consider that each hex of TK will lift the appropriate weight. This means that the 17 STR Telekinesis of the steady wind can lift over 500 lbs per hex, so an object that weights 2000 pounds and filling up 4 hexes would not be beyond the hurricane’s ability to lift. Keep this in mind when one of the heroes decides to drive his or her crimemobile around the city during the hurricane.
Hurricanes spawn tornados. These are best represented as 16d6 Power Blasts, Area Effect Radius, Continuous, Uncontrolled, at 0 Endurance, Persistent, with a linked 30 STR TK with the same modifiers. The best thing is to put them on an activation roll, and have them run for a period of time. How much, you might ask? For eternity, if you are in the path of one. What you do, is make an activation roll each phase, and have it run until it fails to activate. What happens is that the tornado either "jumps", or it breaks up. Tornados will run for several hundred yards, though, so the second activation roll should be quite high (15-), but with each successive roll slightly less. My tornados are built so that they will cut a swath through the land 200 feet wide and a mile long. The neat thing is that , since it is Area Effect, Any Area, the path can meander around and even double back on itself. The TK and the EB do not exactly cover the same are, but it can signify that sometimes things around the tornado will be picked up and tossed around. Also, I gave the tornado the limitation Extra Time. Now, while it isn’t really designed for it, what this means is that it takes 5 minutes for the tornado to peter out. It travels approximately 1000 feet a minute, and the area it damages will be approximately 5000 square hexes. It will probably never completely cover the one mile distance, but that will be okay. Since there is a chance that it will damage a 1000 foot section, not activate for a minute, and then demolish another 1000 foot segment, this would be fairly realistic. As for the direction the tornado will travel, it will probably go the same direction as the sustained wind.
In my hurricane, I have several tornados, so that more than one can be running at a time. Lightning occurs so frequently in some hurricanes that the sky seems to be lit by a flickering arc light. The sound of thunder is barely audible over the roar of the wind and the drumming of the rain, unless you are near the place the lightning hits. A 4d6 RKA, Area Effect 8000x area, Selective Target, Hole in the Middle, Continuous, Uncontrolled, 0 Endurance, and Persistent is what would represent the lightning. I would add an activation roll that decreases as you get further from the eye of the hurricane, since the occurrence of lighting decreases, but the DC of the lighting stays the same. I don't add Indirect to the wind, gusts, or lightning. Some GMs may, but, given the nature of the storm, I don't see that it's necessary: the lightning will come from above, the wind and gusts will come from a direction dependent upon where the "target" is situated in the storm. In neither case will the attack have the element of surprise due to the direction it originates from. Lightning is still a random attack, and should be treated as such. The biggest problem in defining a storm surge is that the surge is composed of millions of tons of water, far beyond what the TK in the Sustained Winds can lift. I considered another Power Blast, Area Effect Line, combined with a more powerful Area Effect TK, and have each do part of the damage. Water weights 8 pounds to the gallon, which means that a 1-hex wide, 1-hex deep section of a 1-hex tall storm surge will weigh 6-1/2 TONS. The storm surge will be several hundred thousand hexes long, and several thousand hexes wide, and may be up to 3 hexes high (except in the rare Category 5 hurricane). Now, the STR to lift over a hundred million tons water would scour the shoreline down to the bedrock, yet the storm surge will leave almost as many trees as it uproots. Concrete and asphalt structures generally survive the water, although buildings tend to be reduced to their constituent parts. Shoreline roads will wash out, both from the storm surge and from pounding waves (another power blast? Oh No!), although most of the inland road damage is caused by the floodwater running over the roads, or undermining their foundations (again, an inherent disadvantage of the soil). The flooding upstream could be considered part of the initial Change Environment, although it's as dangerous a situation as any of the other effects. To top it off, some structures weakened, but not destroyed, by the tidal surge are destroyed when the water recedes: they fill up with water, and when the water recedes, the pressure inside the structure bursts the sides. Originally, these considerations game me trouble figuring out the effect of the storm surge. I have recently come up with a solution: I gave the hurricane enough TK to lift a column of water one hex in area and raise that column to a height of 1 hex. This comes to about 40 STR to lift the 6 ton column of water. I gave the TK Explosion, but only one level of Megascale: the effect will only be felt for an area about ten miles across, centering on the eye. It is up to the GM to decide how much damage this water will do as it comes ashore. For an idea, I suggest you go to the website:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/homepages/roger_pielke/camille/
…and look at the before and after pictures of the damage from hurricane Camille. Granted, Camille was an anomaly, still it will give you some idea of the power these things have. The Richelieu Apartments (of which I include before and after pictures) is rather famous in that there is a lone survivor of it’s destruction to tell what happened. The storm surge basically slammed into the building and demolished the first floor, and the rest of the apartments fell into the flood. Recent building codes along the coast specify that the partitions on the lowest floor in some beach communities be breakaway, so that they will shatter, leaving the support members exposed. The supports are smaller in cross section and are not as affected by the pounding surf. This does not mean that the building will not be washed away.
These effects will gradually decrease in severity as you get further and further away from the eye of the storm. I should have this thing designed so that the rain and such extends farther out than the other effects. It can rain for several days ahead of the storm proper. The storm system may actually be some thousand or so miles across, but the hurricane is the driving force behind it. So, this is what a hurricane will do, but what are its’ disadvantages? For one thing, it has Dependence on large, warm, open bodies of water. Either that or they have susceptibility to landmasses, either one, maybe both. They lose about 1d6 off all powers except the initial Change Environment every half hour the eye is over land, which will slowly reduce the thing back to a plain old rain storm. This doesn’t mean that it’s harmless; Frederick flattened southern Alabama and then went up through Tennessee and Kentucky to West Virginia, where it caused flooding and deaths. Also, the storm may take quite awhile to fade away: Opal still had hurricane force winds when it crossed the state line into Tennessee. This version only has a single 2d6 drain on all powers that hits it every hour. You could have it take 1 dice of this damage every half hour. As it is, all but the Change Environment will be gone after 20 hours. This is fairly realistic, since the rainstorm that is the remnants of a hurricane may go on for days. The way it’s built, the storm can hang around as much as a week after the hurricane has blown itself out.
I used my hurricane in a scenario, and even told a couple of my players that asked how much one cost. I pointed out that it was an act of God, and who knows how many points He has in His power pool. All kidding (well, most kidding) aside, what I do is "describe" the environmental effect in Champions terms, like this: "Okay, you step out into 75 mile per hour wind. It has the effect of a 3½d6 Continuous Power Blast coming from the southeast. You will need to roll a Strength Damage Roll to stand up, unless you have Knockback Resistance. All DEX rolls are reduced –3, and all movement powers are affected by the steady wind. You will have a tendency to move with the wind at 75 miles per hour, and will have forward motion against the wind reduced by that much velocity. Sight and Hearing Group perceptions are at -3 and Smell perception is at –4. Within one segment, you are soaked to the skin (unless they have a sealed system), and the rain is cold. The wind whips the water into your face, making it difficult to see and breathe when facing into the wind. Overhead, the trees are vague, waving black silhouettes against a sky lit by a kind of flickering purple light with periodic flashes that turn the world stark white. The wind is a constant roar, punctuated by the steady drumming of rain, drowning out most other sounds. The roaring is broken by nearby peals of thunder, as well as limbs breaking in trees with sounds like a rifle shot, or the prolonged cracking of splintering trunks. You see objects bounce past in the wind, some recognizable as building materials or yard furniture, some as garbage cans, some unrecognizable altogether. You are constantly being pelted by tiny bits of debris, such as leaves, sticks, small branches, and the occasional plastic flower pot. The horizontal rain blasts this debris off you almost before you notice. Water laps around your ankles, and your footing is poor." And this is without rolling to see if a wind gust comes by or a tree falls.
One thing that a hurricane has that is not represented in the write-up and that is Presence. A hurricane is one of the most dangerous, most awe-inspiring, and frightening things on this planet. Anyone who has sat in a dark, candle-lit a house with no power while the rain beats on the roof and the whining wind literally shakes the house to its’ foundations, sat there waiting to hear the heavy roar of a tornado or the splintering crack of a tree breaking and crashing through the roof, anyone who has sat there while lightning strikes trees all around them as they listen to emergency reports on battery-powered radios, anyone who has done this can tell you, it’s scary as hell. I originally wrote this article for The Clobberin’ Times, but decided that it was a good time to update it to the 5th Edition Champions rules. It let me get rid of a few things I was uncomfortable with, and make it a little more elegant in the way it does some things. This version doesn’t have one thing: a Transformation Attack to cover all the miscellaneous things the hurricane does. Other GMs may want to add it; some may think it’s too powerful as is. Bear in mind, though, that this is a minimal hurricane; larger storms will be more powerful and do far more damage.
Category Barometric Pressure (In) Wind Speed (mph) Storm Surge (feet) Damage Potential
1 >28.9 74-95 4-5 Minimal
2 28.5-28.9 96-110 6-8 Moderate
3 27.9-28.5 110-130 9-12 Extensive
4 27.2-27.9 131-155 13-18 Extreme
5 <27.2 >155 >18 Catastrophic
Chart taken from “Why Nothing Can Travel Faster Than Light and Other Explorations in Nature’s Curiosity Shop” by Barry and David Zimmerman
I have read somewhere that a minimal Category 2 is twice as powerful as a minimal Category 1, a Category 3 twice as powerful as a category 2, a 4 twice as powerful as a 3… you get the picture. This fits in with the Hero system rather well, I think. Overall, my hurricane may do more damage than it should, but I don’t think so. You might lower the activation rolls on some of the added damage effects, but don’t lower the dice in them. By the way, there have been only two recorded Category 5 hurricanes: our old friend Camille in 1969, and the great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 that trashed the Florida Keys. Playing the Hurricane
Actually, all this information, including the character sheet, is useless in playing the hurricane. It really just gives you and idea of what he storm can do, and how to create some of the aspect of the storm. The best way to play the storm would be to describe the effects, throw some of the damage at the players, and see who they handle it. I owls suggest making everyone who tries to move in a hurricane be required to make a Dex Roll at –3, then make a Strength Roll to actually move. Let them have whatever their movement –5” is for free, but to move more than that, they have to roll at least one Body on their Strength dice, and every Body after that will give an additional 1” of movement up to their maximum. Anyone who tries Non-Combat Movement in a hurricane should have their CV reduced to 0, and is just asking to get hit by a storage shed or a carport canopy (or a car). The heroes should be able to use their Strength to resist the “shove” of the wind if they want to stand still, the same as you can use Strength to resist Knockback. Clingers will have trouble finding a dry surface to cling to. Getting trapped in a tornado would be interesting: I’d let the players roll their flight as Strength, and see if they can get out of the TK effect of the twister. The storm surge will come ashore pushing everything with around 40 STR (Ignoring the effects of the storms’ actual movement, which shouldn’t amount to more than 1d6 or so). Buoyant heroes will get lifted up into the water, or sucked into a kind of rip current within the surge. Breathing water that is filled with all sorts of debris will not be pleasant.
…and neither should anything else about the hurricane.
Hurricane Heather
There are no Characteristics on a hurricane, it is just a bunch of powers cruising around the ocean looking for a place to happen.
Cost Powers Note: all powers bought to Zero Endurance
1455 Storm Effects: Change Environment (250000" rad.); Effect: Variable, +1; -2 PER Rolls Sight Sense Group (tot:-3): +6; -2 PER Rolls Hearing Sense Group (tot:-3): +6; -3 PER Rolls Smell Sense Group (tot:-4): +9; -5 Inch Movement: Flight: +15; -5 Inch Movement: Running: +15; Max 6pts Damage (Wind): +30; Max 6pts Damage (Rain, Waves): +30; 3 STR Telekinesis (Wind): +15; - 1 Level on Temperature Chart: +3; -3 DEX Roll & all Related Skills: +12; -2 OCV: +10; Long Lasting (1-Week +/-): +45; Hole in the Middle: Variable Size, +½; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Continuous: +1; Uncontrolled: +½; Clouds, rain, wind, flood. 310 mile radius.
105 Sustained Wind I TK: (STR 17); Range: 655; Manipulation: Coarse, +0; Explosion (Extended Area +1"/DC): +¾; Hole in the Middle: Variable Size, +½; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Continuous: +1; Uncontrolled: +½; Affects All Parts of Target: -¼; Megascale: Size = 10km: +½; Nonselective Target: -¼; Loses 1DC/20 KM 0
59 Sustained Wind II: 3½d6 EB: Range: 445; Versus: PD; Explosion (Extended Area +1"/DC): +¾; Hole in the Middle: Variable Size, +½; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Continuous: +1; Uncontrolled: +½; Linked: To Sustained Wind I: -½; Megascale: Size = 10km: +½; Nonselective Target: -¼; Loses 1 DC/20 KM
79 Wind Gust I; TK: (STR 30); Range: 1180; Manipulation: Coarse, +0; Explosion (Extended Area +1"/DC): +¾; Hole in the Middle: Variable Size, +½; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Continuous: +1; Uncontrolled: +½; Activation: 8-, -2; Megascale: Size = 10km: +½; Nonselective Target: -¼; Loses 1 DC/20 KM
57 Wind Gust II; 7d6 EB: Range: 920; Versus: PD; Explosion (Extended Area +1"/DC): +¾; Hole in the Middle: Variable Size, +½; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Continuous: +1; Uncontrolled: +½; Activation: 8-, -2; Affects All Parts of Target: -¼; Megascale: Size = 10km: +½; Nonselective Target: -¼; Loses 1 DC/20 KM
190 Storm Surge: TK: (STR 40); Range: 1425; Manipulation: Coarse, +0; Explosion (Extended Area +0"/DC): +½; Hole in the Middle: Variable Size, +½; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Continuous: +1; Uncontrolled: +½; Megascale: Size = 1km: +¼; Only vs. Water: -¼; Affects All Parts of Target: -¼; Loses STR @ 1DC/KM (6’ high wall of water) 0 250 Lightning Bolt; 4d6 RKA: Range: 1875; Nonselective Target: -¼; Area Effect (Radius): 96000" radius, +1; Increased Area: ×8000, +3¼; Hole in the Middle: Fixed Size, +¼; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Activation: 15-, -¼; Activation drops -2/10 KM from Eye: -¼
180 Tornado; Activation: 12-, -¾; Activation drops -2/10 KM from Eye: -¼; Activation drops -2/Minute: -¼; Activation rolled every minute (187) 16d6 Energy Blast: Wind; Range: 2800; Versus: ED; Area Effect (Any Area): 28000 hexes, +1; Increased Area: ×1000, +2½; Continuous: +1; Uncontrolled: +½; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Extra Time: 5 min., -2 0 (217) Telekinesis (STR 30); Range: 1630; Manipulation: Coarse, +0; Area Effect (Any Area): 32000 hexes, +1; Increased Area: ×2000, +2¾; Continuous: +1; Uncontrolled: +½; Reduced END: Zero & Persistent, +1; Linked: to EB: -½
180 Another Tornado
180 Another Tornado
180 Another Tornado
180 Another Tornado
100+ Disadvantages
20 DF: Big Mother of a Storm; Concealability: Not Concealable, 15; Reaction: Always noticed & major reaction, +5
10 Hunted: Hurricane Hunters (14-); Capabilities: Less Powerful, 5; Non-combat Influence: None, +0; Geographical Area: Unlimited, -0; Actions: Hunting, ×1; Punishment: Mild, -5
5 One Eye (Couldn’t resist)
10 Public Identity
20 Reputation: Killer Storm (14-, Extreme)
5 Watched: NOAA (14-); Capabilities: Less Powerful, 5; Non-combat Influence: None, +0; Geographical Area: Unlimited, -0; Only Watching: ×½; Punishment: Mild, -5
5 Susceptibility: Solid Land Mass (2d6 Drain/1 Hour); Condition: Common, +10; Drains all powers
10 Rivalry: Previous Hurricanes; Situation: Professional, 5; Position: Superior, +5; Rival: NPC, +0
Campaign Use: Any campaign city with a harbor is a candidate for a hurricane. Every state from New England to Florida, and around the Gulf of Mexico to Texas. While it isn’t likely that California will get hit by a hurricane, it is not impossible. A few years back, a hurricane hit Baja California, and it could just as easily headed up the coast to Las Angeles or San Francisco. Also, remember what I said about Fredrick doing damage in West Virginia; it had to cross through Tennessee and Kentucky before getting there. We also had a hurricane that had 70mph winds when the eye crossed the state line into Tennessee, so it was still classed as a minimal hurricane. This would mean that any state that was only one state away from a coastline was still in danger.
Then there are quantum black holes…
One of the plots for The Enarians (those naughty invading octopoids from my campaign) involved opening a quantum black hole within the eye of a hurricane and using it to “steer” the storm. When I came up with this, I had never read a science fiction story with a similar happenstance. There is a story by Dean McLaughlin, "Perpetual Implosion", that I have read since then, and it involved an accident at a laboratory developing either a space drive or a dimensional gate. The end result was that a hole was punched through to “somewhere else”; either another universe, or an empty part of this universe, and the earth’s atmosphere began to spiral down the hole and make a permanent hurricane. The story told of an oil well fire specialist who takes on the task of “plugging” the hole. This would mean that a hurricane could be “carried” anywhere and let loose at a moment’s notice.
Also, here is something to think about: the world’s leading expert on hurricanes lives in Denver Colorado. Now, you might ask, why would the world’s expert on hurricanes live in Colorado, but, you might also consider: when was the last time they had a hurricane there?
Hurricane Heather: Addenda and Aftermath
Thoughts engendered by Hurricane Ivan
Water: Water is necessary for life, and people get very agitated when denied it. During and after a hurricane, you have two basic problems: distribution and contamination. Water is distributed under pressure through a network of pipes. Everyone knows this. However, there are several points along the distribution system that can fail. I don’t know about where you live, but around my neighborhood, we have a huge elevated water tank Water is pumped up into this tank, then runs by gravity down into the surrounding neighborhoods. This system is fairly fool-proof if the power goes out, at least until the water tank empties. In many communities, they are going to ground-based tanks. The tanks are usually still on the top of a hill, but the pressure will not match the elevated tank. There are a few communities that use high-pressure pumps to maintain the water pressure. These pumps are usually electrically operated, and with no power, there will be no pressure. As a back-up, these water systems always have generators that are maintained against power loss. The problem is, sometimes the generators do not start up and maintain the pressure immediately. Also, as happened across the Bay in one town, the generators may not start at all. This can cause “negative pressure”. Now, it shouldn’t matter, but there are many sources of contamination that the pipes may be subjected to: minor leaks in pipes, automatic valves for some things like storage tanks that may fail, or any open valve along the system. When this negative pressure happens, the pipes will suck in whatever is in the vicinity. Since the hurricane drops so much water on the ground that there exists a very real possibility that roads sill wash out, and this may mean that the utilities that run under those roads will wash out, the result is that water and sewer pipes would both be open and next to each other. The negative pressure will such the raw sewage into the pipe, and may suck rainwater filled with sticks, dead animals, bugs, microorganisms, and dirt. Mmmm, tasty. The broken water pipe will affect distribution, as well. Water systems have valves along the route so that they can isolate one part from the other, but often the damage is still done, and the contamination can be present behind the valve if not caught in time.
Then you have to fix the pipe or generator. The generator may require parts that are not locally available. Your area may be isolated from damaged bridges and flooding, so it may be days before you can find them. As for the pipe, you will have to wait for the rain to stop, and the water to recede.
Water itself can be a pollutant. In Gulf Shores Alabama they have a “wonder of nature”; a freshwater lake, Lake Shelby, just a hundred yards from the ocean. The tidal surge from Ivan carried salt water into the lake. Afterward, the rainwater running down the streams that feed Lake Shelby caused the lake to overflow, and the fresh water cut a channel to the Gulf. Now fresh water is flowing along the beach.
Underground fuel tanks are vulnerable to infiltration when several feet of water are above them. While much of the fuel is not contaminated, pumping the fuel out may result in having water in the tank in your vehicle. I know that diesel injector pumps are damaged if water gets in them. Then to, as I mentioned in the write-up on Hurricane Heather, fuel tanks and septic tanks may “float” to the surface in saturated soil.
Ivan moved north paralleling a river system, and a lot of the rain ran down the streams and into the river. Down here in Mobile, we have “The Causeway”. Built back in the late-20s, early’30s, it is a system of bridges, islands, and fill dirt built across the lower end of the Alabama River Delta. This causeway, part of Highway 90/98, allowed people to drive from Mobile County to Baldwin County, instead of taking the ferry. There are three bridges and a culvert that allow the water from the delta to run out into the Bay. These were not enough. For most of a day, water backed up into the delta and eventually ran over the Causeway. At one point it was supposed to be 3’ deep in places. Most of the Causeway is only 3’ above sea level, and some of it less. I didn’t see it, but I bet it was impressive.
Power: You lose everything in your refrigerator and your freezer if the power stays off too long (my power was off for 15 hours, my mother’s was off for over 60. What little I had in my deep freeze got by fine: after my power came back on, I brought a bunch of mother’s stuff from her freezer here. She lost a lot of food, though.
Even if the traffic lights are still up, they won’t work without power. Although it is a rule that you should treat every intersection like a 4-way stop, apparently most people have no idea how to do that. Debris will also ruin a set of tires before you know it.
Ice: You have no idea how ice is valued unless you can’t get any. National Guard convoys hauled ice into some areas, and these convoys were guarded. My mother has a heart condition, and she was having trouble without air conditioning (no power=no refrigeration).
Death: To some extent, the mandatory evacuation of everyone living south of Interstate 10 probably saved a lot of lives. In the past they have said “evacuate zone D, E, M, O, U, S,” etc. Most people have no idea what “zone” they live in, so using I-10 as a line of demarcation left little room for arguing. Still, people disregarded the evacuation and died.
One truck driver was racing the hurricane, trying to get over Pensacola Bay on I-10, when the storm surge tore out a section of bridge right ahead of him. He locked his brakes, but the cab of the truck still ran off the bridge. He was still in the cab when they lifted it out of the Bay five days later.
Near the place where the truck driver died was a subdivision: a very ritzy and expensive subdivision, located on a cove within sight of the I-10 Bridge. Several families ignored the evacuation order, and had a hurricane party. Out of seventeen people, three survived; they still haven’t found the others. When the tidal surge receded, it sucked their bodies out into the Gulf. Rule of Thumb: If you can see water from your house DO NOT STAY IN IT DURING A HURRICANE!
Heartbreak: They’ve shown pictures of houses and condominiums over at Gulf Shores and Pensacola Beach, some laying on their sides, some collapsed on their first floor, some converted to trails of debris pointing inland, others filled to the roof with sand. One house was lifted off its pilings and set down on the main road between Gulf Shores and the State Line. They’ve shown hollow shells where thriving businesses used to be. They have shown concrete slabs where houses used to be, and they’ve interviewed people who had family that lived in the house that used to sit on the slab.
They’ve shows pictures of cadaver dogs doing their jobs.
Speaking of jobs, all those hotels and businesses that have been wrecked by the hurricane aren’t open after a hurricane; and some will never re-open. The end result is a lot of homeless and jobless people, trying to survive until they can get back on their feet. The economic effects will be felt by the area for years.
Cleanup: Well, someone has to clean up this mess. People in Mobile were told to put all hurricane debris on the curb, and that it would be picked up within 45 days. Then there would be a second pick-up within 30 days after that. There are several locations that are disposing of the debris; mostly tree limbs and leaves. I really need to drag the tree from by back yard and put it on the street, and gather up the leaves they missed on the first round. I had one tree blow down, and one that had the top broken out of it. Another tree lost a limb that fell on my power and phone lines, jerking the phone line out of the box and snatching the insulator for the power line off the house. The Power Company finally got around to tying my power line back to an insulator in November. I had power, but my power line was 7’ off the ground in my front yard.
Luck: Man, was I lucky.
And so was everyone else in Mobile. On the 6:00 news on September 16, the hurricane was headed directly at Mobile, and would have taken a track similar to the one Fredric did 25 years ago (September 12, 1979). This would have put my house, my mother’s house, my father’s house, and my ex mother-in-law’s house (that’s where my daughter was staying) in the ol’ Northeast Quadrant. Ivan was fluctuating between categories, and no one would predict what category it was going to be when it hit.
Around 9:00 or so, with wind gusting up to hurricane strength, the radar image of the hurricane changed: it looked like the “southwest quadrant” was breaking up. The weatherman said that it was probably due to the amount of rain in the storm blocking the radar waves, making that area look like it had no rain in it. Later he changed his mind.
For some inexplicable reason, part of the storm just fell apart. There was no real rain in it, and apparently not as much wind. At the same time, the hurricane suddenly (at least suddenly as far as a hurricane is concerned) darted to the east, and its new path took it through Baldwin County. This put Mobile on the west side of the eye, and in the path of the area where the storm was breaking up. So, I lost a tree, some limbs, some leaves, and suffered minor inconvenience with the loss of power and phone. I consider it lucky indeed. I do feel sorry for the people in Baldwin County and over in Pensacola, but…
Still, you could liken it to being on the “good” side of a nuclear explosion.
Give You Goosebumps Department: One of the local TV stations has a helicopter. It flew back and forth around the area taking pictures of the damage. As it flew over Pensacola Beach, showing soon to be condemned buildings where expensive condos used to be, they neared a landmark. It was this big old sand dune with a cross on top. Church services were held there every week, and one of my cousins got married there. The helicopter circled it a couple of time, because they couldn’t believe it: half the dune was gone, but the cross was still there.
Above: A really impressive picture of the Eye of Hurricane Ivan
Below: 24 Hours or so from landfall. The arrow points to my house. The storm was running almost due north.
Headlines: ACTimes 050107.htm
Local News: Stuck Inside of Mobile
Statewide Report: Captain Alabama
Business: Dixie Publications
The Arts: Books on or about Azalea City
Sports: The Sports Scene
The Media: Azalea City Television and Radio
In Times Past: Prologue
Inhuman Interest Story: Wolfwitch
Special Report: Resurrection Day