Comments by "StuffandThings" (@StuffandThings_) on "The Most Storm-Struck Island on Earth?" video.

  1. A few interesting topics that might be fun to look into: The Red Sea, which is the worlds highest latitude tropical sea and is extremely warm at depth due to tectonic activity, creating coral reefs all the way to the Gulf of Aquaba and Gulf of Suez, along with some interesting deep marine life. The Leeuwin current, an anomalous and shallow warm water current that skirts along the south of Australia, giving rise to exceedingly mild conditions in Wilson's Promontory and the islands of the Bass strait, giving rise to the southernmost mangroves in the Corner Inlet. Southern Australia as a whole has some really weird climates and microclimates. The Sea of Japan, where the northernmost coral reef in the world off of Tsushima Island is roughly 1000km from Vladivostok, which IIRC is the southernmost port that freezes over in the winter (in the Northern hemisphere at least lol). The Sea of Japan therefore gets really cold, really fast as you go north, due to the competing Kuroshio and Oyashio currents. Additionally there is some highly unusual high latitude, cold winter monsoonal climate in South Korea and northern China. Incredibly low altitude equatorial cloud forests in Ecuador. In the Galapagos they reach near to the sea, perhaps even up to it in gullies on southern San Cristobal island, and Pacoche moist forest seems to reach all the way to the sea as well. The coast of Ecuador and the Galapagos are really weird in general, with very foggy yet arid climates (some fog desert even and oceanic climate bordering desert climate in Isabela island), very low latitude desert for a west coast of a continent, lots of microclimates, and generally pretty mild for its latitude, all due to the very powerful Humbolt current reaching equatorial latitudes (with a little help from the Cromwell current). edit, additional topic: Extremely high latitude equatorial-esque tropical rainforest climate in southern Brazil. It reaches all the way down to Cananeia, and includes all the classic elements of true equatorial latitude rainforest, with very low annual variability in temperature and precipitation, high precipitation, and very low winds and no recorded cyclones (the few that have been recorded in the South Atlantic did not hit that region; additionally, true equatorial rainforest will on exceedingly rare occasion get hit by tropical cyclones, like the Seychelles and Sumatra). Even more interestingly, part of what is responsible for the consistent and high precipitation is a zone of tropical thunderstorms that is produced by water evaporating from the Amazon rainforest and moves southeast, in what I like to think of as "Earth's second equator" (a la Tibet being known as "Earth's third pole"). Very fascinating climate anomaly!
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  2. A fun topic might be anomalous cyclones. Some cyclone remnants have managed to make it all the way to Antarctica and the Arctic, Vamei had parts of it straddle the equator, the 1975 Pacific Northwest hurricane had its remnants hit BC, and Yaku managed to hit Peru of all places. Plus there's some Mediterranean cyclone systems that have managed to reach Category 1 and even 2 intensity, cyclone like storms in the Great Lakes and Caspian, and the cyclones of the South Atlantic.
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  3.  @Mahinadrowned  And that basically all of the coastal redwood forest got destroyed. And any decently intact bits of nature in that area by the coast are prohibitively expensive. Its basically just a paradise for the rich now, unless you want to scrape by and live in endless strip mall...
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  4. Its also worth mentioning that because the eastern US is on a pretty old passive continental margin, it is very flat with a very shallow sloping land. Plus, the US is very developed along the east coast, and infrastructure isn't always particularly designed with hurricanes in mind. The Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan get absolutely hammered by typhoons and have large populations, but generally weather them pretty well due to steep coastlines and good preparation. Its a lot of factors that make hurricanes in the US particularly bad, particularly along the coast and even more so in the gulf.
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  5. What I find particularly interesting about these islands is that they're usually pretty arid despite the high incidence of cyclones. Usually cyclones don't impact arid regions all that much (of course cause many of them are either in very continental areas or near cold water upwellings) but this seems to be a very stark counterpoint. Socorro and Guadalupe also have some interesting volcanic activity.
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