This is an example of an expository essay where the student followed three different patterns: Sequencing, Cause and Effect, and Description. Good job, Jonathan!
Hurricane Irene
The Mid-Atlantic Region is experiencing some winds up to fifty miles per hour and most states in that area are in very high chances of flooding. Both regions are having very different experiences now. The hurricane will soon be passing over, so you need to prepare. My mind imagined the water surrounding my house, swallowing it. I shook my head, trying not to think about it. There must be hundreds of thousands that evacuated, and that’s just from Connecticut, and it is so small compared to the other states. The highways were really crowded, because everybody wanted to evacuate. It feels like we will get hit pretty badly; but perhaps we’ll get lucky, New Jersey could be underwater in some areas right now. There will probably be billions of dollars of damage, but soon everything will be the same. Even with losses, we have to move on. If we were in the most danger we would have the National Guard here, except they are in New York and New Jersey. The overall affect there has been lower than expected but repairs will still cost billions of dollars, even if not a lot of houses are destroyed. Flooding has been extreme. FEMA is still looking for money to help citizens but the government has already cut the budget – a government shutdown possible in the future if there is not enough money to support our country.
As Irene went over the Atlantic Ocean, the pressure barely dropped. Right now it is about 555 while our regular sea level air pressure is around 750, and is moving away from the sea, so it will not be condensing as much water vapor. The wind speed is getting lower and lower, moving in a clockwise motion. It is almost the end of the summer so we can just hope there will be no more hurricanes. People near the Long Island Sound should have all evacuated because there is eight feet of storm surge expected.
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The howl of the cold and strong late Saturday wind could be heard miles away. The windows still shivered in fear though they begged for mercy to be spared from the wind. The trees groaned and moaned, and as root by root was torn from the ground, the evidence was right in front of me that the storm had definitely come. A sudden flash of lightning in the sky shot right toward the wet grassy ground, producing the sound of thunder. Peeking out of the window I saw a swirl of the clouds; they were stacked on each other but they were definitely going in a circular motion. The yellow flash and streak of the lighting hit my neighbor’s backyard. It illuminated everything around it, and banished the darkness for a few seconds: the thunder was muffled over the furious wind, and suddenly the slow drone of the loss of power was heard throughout the North East. It was black everywhere. I couldn’t see where I was going. I bumped into a cold wall, stubbing my toe that I grabbed with pain. First I had to get something that could light my path. Where was that flashlight? I stumbled toward the table and found the flashlight. Grabbing it, I pressed the black rubbery button, producing a wave of light. Suddenly there was a faint swishing sound of something going back and forth. I wondered what it was. Then I realized it was the roar of the sea. I wondered if my friend Matthew had evacuated, as he lived on the coastline of the beach. There, you can climb down these smooth rock stairs with a rope as a handrail and on the last three steps you can feel the salty water splashing your toes.
I wonder when this will be over, I thought. Maybe it isn’t going to be over. The Weather Channel said that it would last around a day, but not even the Weather Channel is right sometimes. Even with the seventy-mile-per-hour winds, it was still humid and hot. Basically everything was not working. You couldn’t even buy or cook anything because all the stores were probably closed. At least there was warm water, only for a while though, because a couple hours later, it seemed the water they were getting was from Antarctica. All I could do is lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, waiting for my body to fall asleep. It seemed like an eternity and probably hours passed, then my eyes opened and it was morning.
It was a disaster outside: it was like a girl with a bad hair day, but for months. Trees were like fallen soldiers wounded in the war – could the trees be removed? It looked like a torn battlefield so that everything was a gigantic mess. There was some decent light throughout the house. I looked outside, and it seemed like wherever I looked almost every tree branch was just sitting on the ground, waiting to be picked up. We drove to the Home Depot to buy some supplies and luckily it was open. When we got back home, our power was on. That was quick, I thought.
Since most people were prepared for Irene, we were able to recover from the disaster. However, a total of fifty-five people died from the hurricane, including people from Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. The power was slow in was being restored, but thankfully, we were using it by Monday, so we only had power out for about one and a half days.
Over seven hundred and fifty four thousand homes lost power, just in Connecticut! Now there are two new hurricanes approaching: will the North East get ready in time, or will the citizens be hit with another tragic blow? For those of you that don’t really know what hurricanes are, they are storms gathered in warm areas, mostly in the late summer; hurricanes are the next higher development from tropical storms. Hurricanes form over the ocean because they need to extract water vapor from it. Unlike any other storm, the middle of it is always warm and calm and the whole storm has a very low air pressure. Once they are far away from the ocean they will gradually lose power. Hurricanes also include high-speed winds. Hurricane Irene is different from any other hurricane the North East has experienced since recording began. It includes storm surge, heavy rain, and thunderstorms in a Category One hurricane. Normally this would be only in Category Five hurricane but it is in the form of a Category One, which is very different from what New England has faced. We can just hope that we will pass through this one.
Hurricane naming has been very important for keeping track of major weather systems. Back in the past, they named hurricanes with female names. We started to change our ways in the 1970s, and Hurricane Andrew is an example: in the past it would have perhaps been named Hurricane Audrey. The National Weather Service names hurricanes in the U.S.A. The choosing of names is random: it is just basically like closing your eyes and sticking your hand into a bag and pulling a piece of paper out. The list of names they have not picked could probably cover the whole width of the earth one time.
Without technology we would probably still be in the Stone Age. I have always wondered why time is an important essence to innovation. Why didn’t we just think of computers centuries ago? Time is what we need to keep us thinking every day, to make things better. It is almost like a system, of input and hard work and effort. The output has been technology, and that helps us in life. This is a cycle that I hope will keep going and going. Technology costs money, and everything has a value, a price. I think that the better the quality the technology is, the more value it should be. Some places of the world are part of lots of areas filled with poverty. As the rest of the world advances, where will these poverty-filled communities be, unable to purchase the technology? We can donate to these communities, but we can only do so much, as this might create an imbalance in the world, causing disruption and thus triggering a fight for resources to survive. While some places will have fancy furniture and cars, the rest of the world could be in search for food and water.
Innovation is in everyone’s blood, which is why the imagination creates reality. Leonardo Da Vinci designed helicopters! Helicopters were actually invented in the twentieth century. His dreams have come true. To me, most humans take electricity for granted and we don’t think about what it was like back before its use. I hope the world together can remember the journey this planet has been through. We should use our resources, because this is everyone’s land to share. We need to be wise in our decisions, since they affect the things around us: everyone has a connection to electricity in some way. Most people feel that power outages ruin everything in our lives. However, long ago people only had flame. Electricity is something that allows us to excel in life, but we also forget the old ways of just using a simple but useful candle. We use flashlights now, right, and we still use candles today. In Hanukkah they use candles; this might sound funny but why not just use flashlights? This is because sometimes, tradition rules over technology and using something advanced is not always necessary, and what the past used carries on.
It was nighttime and I was under my cozy blankets in my bed; I looked up into my dark bluish ceiling. The wind was still blowing, every now and then all the way to the Mid-Atlantic region. I felt so peaceful even though the hurricane outside was blasting and rocking. I wondered why everything in life worked the way it did. I realized I was one of many other people who were experiencing this natural disaster throughout the North East region. Compared to all the other states and countries in the world Connecticut is a puny baby, and it is like as if the rest of the world is a fifty-foot tall giant. I felt so weird that I was just one of billions of people, each with a new story to tell, and this my story. Each story from everyone is different in some way, and this is mine. The story of a kid named Jonathan who experienced his first hurricane ever. Then my eyes fluttered, and I slowly closed them and fell asleep in my bed, with the cold Sunday wind in Connecticut still blowing outside.