Module 8- Jonah Kim

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  1. My hometown is Lansdale, Pennsylvania. Locating my hometown was difficult because the scale on the map was so large. In my town natural disasters do not really occur frequently. On the maps I would say that Lansdale is at a level zero zone for earthquakes and at a level one zone for extratropical storms. Also, the Nathan World Map of Natural Disasters indicates Lansdale is at a level one zone for wildfires, level two zone for tornados, and level three zone for hailstorms. I can’t even say with much certainty that I categorized my hometown correctly. The level zones that the map issued my hometown are pretty accurate regarding the weather. In conclusion, it would have been easier to classify my hometown if the map had been zoomed in on to Pennsylvania.
  2. On March 31, 2016 at 06:37 AM (UTC), the Popcatepetl Volcano erupted in the States of Puebla, Mexico and Morelos. Damage level is not or not known. The number of affected people was zero. However, The last report came over 24 hours ago and it is not updated. The Popcatepetl Volcano is 50 miles away from Mexico City, one of Mexico’s largest cities. The radius of the eruption is 100 km. My hometown cannot experience a volcanic eruption because there are no volcanoes in Pennsylvania. If a volcano were to erupt in Lansdale, the entire town would be covered in volcanic debris along with neighboring towns. In my town, the less wealthy and elderly would be vulnerable to a volcanic eruption in Lansdale. It would be hard for the less wealthy to afford cleaning volcanic debris. Also, famers with a lot of property would have so much more to clean.
  3. In my hometown of Lansdale natural hazards don’t happen very often, based off of personal experience. I have been living in Lansdale for almost 11 years and so I know the usual weather pretty well.  The only one time I can recall is a storm that changed from snow to rain and then into hail. At night I remember my parents wanting to park our cars in the garage because hail the size of golf balls was following out of the sky. I went outside to walk my dog and we just got pelted with balls of ice. It hurt a lot.
  4. In Lansdale, pre-event preparedness would help to reduce vulnerability to natural hazards. Issuing a protocol for when hail gets to a certain size would be effective. For example, local government could rule that if hail is bigger than 1cm in radius there’s a warning issued telling people to stay indoors. The best way to get this accomplished would be to write to and get in contact with our county commissioner (my town does not have a mayor). Some things I can do to help reduce vulnerability is build resilience in non-disaster times. So when it’s not hailing I can replace glass counter top tables that are on my porch with a metal table or a wooden one. Also, I can go around my neighborhood right after a bad hail storm and see if anything needs repairing or help.

4 thoughts on “Module 8- Jonah Kim”

  2. Hi Jonah, great post. I agree that the world map has way to large of a scale to have any relevance to something as small as a town. If it were just a map of PA, it could have been a lot more useful. Hail the size of golf balls sounds really frightening, and something I definitely have not experienced even though we are relatively close. This is just one example of how the scale of the map changes a lot of things.

  4. Hi Jonah, here is a link to my blog post: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/04/01/dylan-hellings-module-8/

    I see you’re from Lansdale, I’m from Plymouth Meeting so only about 15 minutes away. Have a few friends that went to North Penn maybe we have some mutual friends. I’m really glad we’re both in an area that is a zone 0 for earthquakes. Since I was a little kid I was always irrationally scared of them even though it’s not something I’d ever face without leaving the area. The idea of the Earth splitting blow you is absolutely horrifying. I like your proposal for hail warnings and the like. The only reason these are sometimes ineffective is because of “false alarms” like getting tornado warnings when there never has been one on the area. Definitely good for our area though!

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