Getting into the storm

Marisa O’Neil

All eyes were on Hurricane Isabel last week as she hit the North

Carolina coast, especially 20 pairs of eyes in Kathi Krolopp’s

second- and third-grade class at Eastbluff Elementary School.

Since the beginning of the school year, the students have tracked

tropical storms and hurricanes on a special map. Each student has a

pencil-drawn pinwheel in the middle of the Atlantic labeled Fabian on

his or her map.

Krolopp stood in front of a pull-down map of North and South

America and told her class that Isabel had weakened from a Category 5

hurricane to a Category 1 because the winds were blowing at 110 mph.

If it weakened much more, it would turn into a tropical storm.

“Can a tropical storm still be big and ferocious and huge?”

third-grader John Pagliassotti asked.

“Yes, it can,” she said.

Next, the students searched for North Carolina on their maps by

finding the Florida peninsula and going north. They then set about

carefully drawing Isabel’s swirling tendrils, just brushing its

coast.

“I made clouds around it,” 7-year-old Kirby Morrow announced

proudly, showing gray shading around his hurricane.

Once everyone had Isabel on the map, Krolopp asked them to look at

a chart at the bottom of the page to figure how big its storm surge

would be. After some careful consideration, Gabriel Husain Kennan

raised his hand.

“Mrs. K, it’s actually a Category 2,” he corrected in a

business-like tone, punctuating his statement with two fingers held

in a V.

She consulted the chart and agreed that Gabriel was right.

Krolopp then showed them a Los Angeles Times article about Isabel

that read that 40 ships sailed out to sea from Norfolk to escape its

winds. She also said she heard that people from a nursing home had

been evacuated from the Outer Banks, but officials were still trying

to decide what to do with people in an area prison.

“They can take the people out of the prison and could put them on

a boat and then put them in the middle of the sea,” third-grader

Thomas Sweeney suggested.

At the end of the lesson, the class went on to review storms

around the world, naming typhoons, cyclones, tropical storms and

hurricanes -- including 1997’s Linda.

“Is my aunt a hurricane because her name is Linda?” Kirby asked

with a chuckle.

“No, probably not,” Krolopp said.

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot

education writer Marisa O’Neil visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa

area and writes about her experience.