{"id":5331,"date":"2025-07-05T15:54:26","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T15:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/?p=5331"},"modified":"2025-07-05T15:54:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T15:54:28","slug":"having-fun-with-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/having-fun-with-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Having fun with AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I asked it to describe the amount of energy in a tropical cyclone. I used four storm sizes for comparison: 1. a typical Category 1 storm; 2. a borderline Category 4\/5 storm; and historical examples 3. Supertyphoon Yutu that struck Saipan in October 2018 (I was there!) and the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane in the Florida Keys (typically rated at “highest wind speeds to ever strike the U.S.”). Here are the short answer results.
\ud83c\udf0a More Intuitive Perspective
A single Category 1 hurricane releases enough energy to power the entire world for ~3 days.
The latent heat in a hurricane is like detonating a Hiroshima bomb every second for a week.

\ud83d\udd01 Category 4\/5 Storm in the Same Terms
\ud83c\udf0d World Energy Use
Cat 1 Hurricane: Can power the world for ~3 days
Cat 4\/5 Hurricane: Can power the world for ~12 days
\ud83d\uddd3\ufe0f That\u2019s nearly 2 weeks of powering every city, factory, lightbulb, server farm, and vehicle on Earth \u2014 from one storm.

\u2622\ufe0f Hiroshima Bomb Equivalence
Hiroshima bomb = ~6 \u00d7 10\u00b9\u00b3 joules
Cat 1 Hurricane: Equivalent to ~800,000 Hiroshima bombs total
\u27a4 Or 1 Hiroshima bomb per second for a week
Cat 4\/5 Hurricane: Equivalent to ~3.3 million Hiroshima bombs
\u27a4 Or 1 Hiroshima bomb<\/strong> every second for nearly 38 days
So instead of detonating a Hiroshima bomb every second for a week, you’re now looking at over a month of that kind of energy release \u2014 nonstop.

\ud83c\udf0d World Energy Use
Typhoon Yutu (Saipan, 2018) could power the all of Earth for approximately 12 days nonstop\u2014same scale as other Cat\u202f4\/5 storms.
\u2622\ufe0f Hiroshima Bomb Equivalence
\ud83d\udca3 A Hiroshima bomb is ~6\u00d710\u00b9\u00b3 J.
2\u00d710\u00b2\u2070\u202fJ \u00f7 6\u00d710\u00b9\u00b3\u202fJ \u2248 3.3 million Hiroshima bombs
Or putting it another way: 1 Hiroshima bomb every second for 38 days straight.

\ud83d\udd01 Scaled Analogies (as asked)
\ud83c\udf0d World Energy Use
Category 1 Hurricane: ~3 days global power
1935 Labor Day Hurricane: ~9 days \u2014 enough energy to power Earth for over a week.
\u2622\ufe0f Hiroshima Bomb Equivalents
6\u00d710\u00b9\u00b3\u202fJ per Hiroshima bomb
Labor Day Hurricane:
That\u2019s like 1 Hiroshima bomb per second for \u224829 days \u2014 a full month of continuous nuclear blasts.
\ud83c\udf2a\ufe0f Key Takeaways
It was slightly less energetic than a very long-duration Category 5, but still among the most powerful storms ever. Its compact size and ultra-low pressure made it extremely efficient, packing monster energy into a small area. This aligns with what made it so devastating\u2014it released concentrated power equivalent to hundreds of megaton-class nuclear bombs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I asked it to describe the amount of energy in a tropical cyclone. I used four storm sizes for comparison: 1. a typical Category 1 storm; 2. a borderline Category 4\/5 storm; and historical examples 3. Supertyphoon Yutu that struck Saipan in October 2018 (I was there!) and the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane in the … Continue reading Having fun with AI<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oUw6-1nZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5331"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5334,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5331\/revisions\/5334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwilliamcupp.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}