Hurricane Drawing Worksheet
Six boxes show the same beach house, palm tree, truck and power pole in dotted lines. A stronger hurricane hits each one, from Category 1 to Category 5, and students draw what is left. In the last box they draw the storm surge.
Download the worksheet (PDF)What students do
- See the wind speed for each hurricane category, with a few words on what that storm does.
- Draw over the dotted lines for the parts still standing, and leave out what the wind took.
- In the sixth box, use the ruler to draw the sea 10 feet deep, and see that it reaches the edge of the roof.
- End up with six drawings side by side, each one worse than the last.
How to use it
The dotted lines are the scene before the storm. Each box has only a few words, on purpose: children take the idea from drawing the same house six times, each worse than the last. The fuller description for each category is in the list below. There is no single right drawing, so there is no answer key. To compare, look at the same category in the hurricane categories book.
The storm surge box makes the point the category number cannot: the scale measures wind, but water does the most harm. For plotting practice, pair it with the hurricane tracking map.
What each hurricane really does
- Category 1 (74 to 95 miles per hour): Shingles and gutters come off. Big branches snap. The power can go out for days.
- Category 2 (96 to 110 miles per hour): Big parts of the roof and siding tear away. Many trees snap or fall.
- Category 3 (111 to 129 miles per hour): The roof boards rip off and the pointed ends of the roof break. Many trees fall.
- Category 4 (130 to 156 miles per hour): Most of the roof is gone and some outside walls fall. Most trees snap. Power poles fall.
- Category 5 (157 and up miles per hour): Most wooden houses are destroyed. The roof fails and the walls fall in.
- Storm surge: the wind pushes the sea onto the land. The house walls on the sheet are 10 feet tall, so 10 feet of water reaches the edge of the roof.
Where the numbers come from
Wind speeds are the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale used by the United States National Hurricane Center, and the damage for each category follows the Hurricane Center’s descriptions.
The book that goes with it
