Hurricanes are massive cyclonic storms with heavy rains and high winds that occur frequently on the western coast of the Uzdan continent. Hurricanes occur in the summer months and can be devastating to those living in low-lying areas.

 

Hurricanes are a regular event in the Kellnan islands to the south, and frequently wash the ramshackle shantytowns of the region into the sea. Roughly two out of five years, a hurricane will travel far enough north for the winds to disturb the Recording Orb kept atop the Meteorologist's Tower in Uzda. These hurricanes are known as Great Hurricanes. In the event that more than one hurricane should reach the Tower in a given year, the storms are named by the star ascendent on the day they arrived in Uzda (Great Hurricane Weasel of 611, for instance, or the devestating Great Hurricane Musician of 704). The position of the Imperial Meteorologist had an exceptionally long history; after the Secret Chancellor and the Physicker Exemplary, the Imperial Meteorologist was the oldest established formal position within the Uzdumalian Court.

 

Hurricanes have a history that predates even those ancient days; some of the few cuneiform tablets that have been recovered from the ruins of Curuddak, for instance, discuss the anger of the Zumerians at the failure of their leaders to properly prepare them for a punishing storm. Anthropologists theorize that the Zumerian people were polytheists, and that the figure today identified as the Great God was initially seen only as a rain god (or possibly a goat god who could ward off storms) who could be appeased with burnt offerings.

 

In modern times, one of the most dangerous tasks of the air corps was monitoring the skies for the signs of gathering hurricanes. Pilots in general did not attempt to traverse them; Erikoinen Kervovasdottir is one of the few figures documented to have done this successfully in 498 (winning a prize of six pounds of sugar and a night in a House of Untethered Youths), although the feat was a staple of eightpenny novelettes and low drama. If hurricanes were sighted, pilots from the Imperial Messengers were dispatched up and down the western coast, where klaxons would be sounded warning residents of the impending danger. (Before the development of these "hurricane horns" in 295, kulkun were used to sound the warning, gaining the association with authority that they maintain on parts of the coast to the present day.)

 

Hurricanes were associated with the star Hotbreath, the color blue, and the "swamp" or lesser lion. As Beasts of the World recounts:

 

For all her fierceness to man or when her cubs are threatened, the swamp lion is a timid beast. She hides from daylight, she runs from fire, and when the King of Storms will soon arrive, she sends up a mournful howl and buries her head between her paws and cannot be roused.

 

This is, of course, rank superstition, but it did not prevent Drevis III, called "the Philosopher", from installing a menagerie in the imperial household filled with over a dozen lesser lions. Soon after claiming that these were all the warning system Uzda needed and attempting to disband the Imperial Messengers, Drevis was poisoned by his eldest son and the menagerie converted to a public zoo "for the Amusement and Edification of the Good People of Uzda", and more scientific methods of hurricane watching returned to prominence.

 

See also:

 

Beasts of the World

Bells

Erikoinen Kervovasdottir

Houses of Untethered Youths

Lions

Secret Chancellor

Sugar