Cyclone Sidr

As we are preparing for Thanksgiving and be thankful for another relatively mild hurricane season over the continent U.S., but the season is not over yet in the Indian Ocean. As this Reuters news reported by Anis Ahmed show:

DHAKA (Reuters) - A severe cyclone has killed more than 500 people in Bangladesh and left thousands injured or missing, triggering an international relief effort on Friday to help the disaster-prone country cope with its latest disaster.

Local officials and Red Crescent workers said 508 deaths had been confirmed. Hundreds more were injured or missing after Cyclone Sidr struck overnight packing winds of 250 kph (155 mph).

The Category 4 cyclone triggered a 15-foot (5-metre) high tidal surge that devastated three coastal towns and forced 3.2 million people to evacuate, officials and aid agencies said.

Yes, the winds at 155 mph is Category 4. But they call it Cyclone in that part of the world. So we call it Hurricane and they call it Typhoon in Eastern Pacific and Cyclone in Southen Indian Ocean. It could be confusing for people reading the news from different parts of the world. So if anything we need to bring things together to simplify and blending the terms rather than codify everything by the code words like "diversity."

Just in case some overly wise person might incline to link this cyclone to, what else, global warming, this Now Republic article reminds us that:

Almost 37 years ago to the day, a category 3 equivalent storm made landfall on Bangladesh resulting in the deaths of over 300,000 people. Dubbed the Bhola cyclone, the flooding due to storm surge is widely regarded as one of the most deadly natural disasters of the modern era. In 1991 at least 138,000 people were killed by another cyclone which made landfall on Bangladesh.

So it has had happened long before Albert Arnold Gore Jr. lost his election and the come forth of SUV's. Where were Gore and those UN IPCC and Nobel Peace Prize people 37 years ago?