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Letter: Butterflies, causes and hurricanes

Published 29 April 2015

From Tim Morrison

Leslie’s letter on the butterfly effect also implies a question on the efficacy of those butterflies. If one assumes a billion butterflies (that’s just 50,000 per species) flapping their little wings three times a second for a couple of hours a day during a hurricane season of 100 days, and all we see is 100 or so hurricanes and cyclones worth the mention, then that’s 20 trillion wing flaps per achieved hurricane.
St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK

Issue no. 3019 published 2 May 2015

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