B. A, Williams, Jr., aged 12, of Boulevard, Va., for his question:

What makes a hurricane die out?

Certainly it would be a sad world if hurricanes didn't die out. While Edith of 1955 was blowing up we should still be worrying about what Carol of 1954 was going to do next. Pretty soon the world would be covered with a rash of hurricanes. Luckily for us, the old earth takes better care of us than that. The life of a hurricane is a short and a fierce one. And the old earth has her reasons for making them. She is just trying to keep her blanket straight. She likes to have the air in her blanket of atmosphere more or less the same all over.

So, only once in a while do the storm warnings go up along the east coast. A hurricane is on the dray. Weathermen report its progress. Weather planes fly up to check the howling monster, It is shaped like a doughnut hundreds of miles wide, raging winds swirl around a calm eye in the center.

The weathermen start their records as soon as the monster is born. It rates as a hurricane when its winds reach 75 miles an hour. The first of the season is given a girl's name beginning with A, the second with B. The weathermen name them. And since they do all the work of checking and warning we should be happy to let them have the fun of naming the monsters,

Not all hurricanes strike the land Most of them blow over the sea. Sooner or later every one of them comes to an end. Its howling winds slacken and die down. Its life span is a few weeks at moat.

The hurricane starts and gets its energy from the sun, Long hours of tropical sunshine pour down on the ocean around the West Indies. The sea warms the air above it; the warm air expands and rises. A pocket of light air is created. Warm air cools itself as it expands. But the balance of the earth's blanket of atmosphere has been upset. The air cannot cool itself enough to even things out.

This pocket of light, rising air is surrounded on all sides by less light, normal air. The normal air behaves like water when you scoop a dipper full from a pail. It rushes in to fill up the hole. The warm, light air creates a shortage. The normal air rushes in to even things up. Winds rush in from all directions to fill up the shortage at the center of the hurricane.

The spin of the earth sets these winds blowing in a spiral direction. The howling hurricane is carried north or south on the prevailing winds. All the time the winds are trying to fill the pocket of light rising air in the middle, Meantime the storm travels hundreds of miles,

Gradually the light warm air is mixed with the normal air around it. Gradually the earth is getting her blanket of atmosphere evened up. The storm calms when the light air is thoroughly mixed with the normal air around it. The job is done, the light and normal air patches are evened up. The old earth is comfortable again and the hurricane can die down peacefully.