Hurricane Juan

On September 28th one of the most powerful and destructive hurricanes to ever hit Atlantic Canada struck the coastline of Prince Edward Island. Hurricane Juan was a very harmful and costly storm. It's winds caused power outages all over Atlantic Canada. Though there were plenty of bad side effects, there were also a positive as well. The hurricane helped by killing off many Spruce Beetles that were harming the tree's, but unfortunately killing all of the tree's to. There was a lot of damage done to house's, and there was money required to repair everything. The hurricane caused big problems for Atlantic Canada.

The hurricane formed South East of Bermuda on the 24th when a tropical wave tracked into the Atlantic Ocean. It hit land on the 28th in Prince Edward Island as a category two hurricane. It was still a category two for a while after that, and was active until the next day.The damage was mostly spread out across Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The main cause of all the damage was the high winds gusting up to 185 kilometers and hour. It cost about 113 million dollars to repair all of the damage done to our power lines and clearing all of the tree's that had fallen into houses and roads. They also had to repair the roads from the flooding that had happened.

There were many negatives side effect's that the hurricane caused on Atlantic Canada. It destroyed many home's and caused people to be out of power for several days. There was no power in many schools so children could not go to school, and there was work to be caught up on. People also couldn't go to work, and most likely had trouble finding places for their children to go if they're work did decide to stay open. Many tree's in our parks had been destroyed and ripped up. Point Pleasant Park lost 85% of its trees, and remained closed until June of 2004.

While there were many negative effects, there was a good side effect as well. Around the time the hurricane hit, there was an outbreak of Spruce Beetles. They were eating away at our tree's, and though the hurricane did destroy many trees, it was able to kill many Spruce Beetles as well. Though the trees were killed, they can be regrown and we can have hope that the beetle won't come back and hurt our trees once again. The Spruce Beetle does a lot of harm to our forests.

Though this hurricane was terrible, I believe that it was also good because of the fact it killed off many of the beetles. These natural disasters are unfortunate but a very real part of life. I think its important that people should be ready and prepared for events like this. That way when hurricanes and storms happen, the time it takes to repair all the damages can be minimal. Hurricane Juan was a horrible and memorable storm for many.