What's the horsepower of Hurricane Frances?

[phantom power]

There's been some comparison of Frances, Charley and Andrew. Andrew was Cat-5, but only half the diameter of Frances.

Hurricanes are big heat-engines. We should compare hurricane horse-power. I bet Frances is churning out more Joules per second than Andrew or Charley.

If we could measure instantaneous power output, then we could integrate over the lifetime of the storm, and get total energy output.

[carpediem]

1. chad , the weather guy on cnn said

it could power the entire planet for 5 hours.

Of course, Heidi didn't seem too interested or to understand, so unfortunately nothing more was said at the time I was listening. He seemed pretty excited about it though.

[Political_Junkie]

2. Wow, now that's

a way of explaining it that I can get my mind around. Too bad Heidi wasn't interested enough to ask questions.

[Kolesar]

3. That sounds like an Energy measurement

whereas Power is Energy per unit of time (P = E/t).
I don't understand how he can get a number for how much energy it has. A number for power would be obtainable.

Hence, the power of a hurricane can be stated. I don't know how anybody can state its energy.

[phantom power]

4. I see... over what period of time?

So, we have this equation:

(EW)(5-hours) == (HW)(HT)

EW = "power requirement of planet earth"
HW = "Wattage of Frances"
HT = "Time period that Chad was thinking of"

It's too bad that Heidi didn't care about EW, HW or HT.

[snowFLAKE]

5. Some (possibly) Relevant statistics

Here:

http://physics.syr.edu/courses/modules/ENERGY/ENERGY_POLICY/tables.html

e.g., in 1990 the earth's power consumption was 13.5 terawatts

OR

U.S. Total Energy Consumption (1990)

= 82.1x10e15 Btu (82.1 Quads) = 38.8 MBPD oil equivalent = 86.6x10e9 GJ

[NNadir]

6. I don't know, but let's harness the energy to make biodiesel and ethanol.