For more than two days in September 1974, the people of Honduras shut their windows, locked their doors and covered in their homes. Fifi was outside, and they were frightened.

By the time Fifi had left, 8,000 people were dead, Fifi wasn't a pet dog as the name suggests. It was a hurricane, one of the most destructive natural phenomena in the world.

Why do we give human names to storms and hurricanes?

We didn't always. Two hundred years ago, many hurricanes in the Caribbean were named after the saint's(基督徒的)day on which the storm occurred. Later, storms were known by the name of the city where they came ashore.

Meteorologists (气象学家) then tried naming storms after the latitude (纬度) and longitude (经度) where they occurred.

Finally, in 1953, hurricanes started getting people's names —specifically, female names. Male names were added in 1979.

There are six sets of names for what the experts call “Atlantic tropical cyclones”( 热带风暴).

Each list is used every six years and consists of 21 names, starting with every letter but Q, U, X, Y ,Z. the names alternate (交替)between male and female.

A storm won't get a name until its winds reach 39 mph or about 62.4 kph, at which point it becomes a tropical storm. At 74 mph or 118.4 kph it's declared a hurricane.

The 126 names on the list are used only for storms that form off the Atlantic coast of the US. There are separate lists for the Pacific.

So what happens if a hurricane should cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific? It's happened before. The storm just gets a new name and sometimes a new sex.

Max Mayfield is the director of the National Hurricane Centre, headquartered in Miami, Florida. He is in charge of picking new names for storms off the Atlantic coast.

He doesn't do it alone, though. His counterparts in two dozen other countries in the Caribbean, Central America and North America vote on what names will replace retired names.

1.From the first paragraph we can find that ________.

A.Honduras is a country which was destroyed by Fifi

B.Honduras is a country which has no mountains

C.Honduras is a country which faces the ocean

D.Honduras is a country which lies at high latitude

2.Which of the following is true according to the passage?

A.There were no hurricanes two centuries ago.

B.The Caribbean is a state of the United States.

C.The Caribbean is a place where hurricanes occur often.

D.Fifi was formed off the Pacific.

3.The names for storms and hurricanes, as this passage shows,________.

A.are set for use.

B.are all from American English

C.are difficult to spell

D.are easy to fix

4.The underlined word “counterparts” in the last paragraph means ________.

A.citizens holding the same opinion

B.people with a similar position or function

C.passengers traveling by sea

D.assistants working abroad

 

When Dave was eighteen, he bought a secondhand car for 200 so that he could travel to and from work more__ than by bus. It worked quite well for a few years, but then it got so old, and it was costing him____much in repairs that he decided that he had better ____it.

He asked among his friends to see if anyone was particularly____to buy a cheap car, but they all knew that it was falling to pieces, so___of them had any desire to buy it. Dave's friend Sam saw that he was ____ when they met one evening, and said, “What's____, Dave?”

Dave told him, and Sam answered, “Well, what about advertising it in the paper? You may ___more for it that way than the cost of the advertisement!” Thinking that Sam's____was sensible(合理的),he put an advertisement in an evening paper, which read “For sale: small car,____ very little petrol, only two owners. Bargain at 50.”

For two days after the advertisement first appeared, there was no ____.But then on Saturday evening he had an enquiry(询问).A man rang up and said he would like to___ him about the car. “All right,” Dave said, feeling happy. He asked the man whether ten o'clock the next morning would be____or not. “Fine,” the man said, “and I'll____ my wife. We intend to go for a ride in it to ____ it.”

The next morning, at a quarter to ten, Dave parked the car in the square outside his front door, ____ to wait there for the people who had____ his advertisement. Even Dave had to ____that the car really looked like a wreck(残骸).Then, soon after he had got the car as clean____ it could be, a police car stopped just behind him and a policeman got out. He looked at Dave's car and then said, “Have you reported this ____ to us yet, sir?”

1. A.directly B.safely C.properly D.easily

2.A.so B.such C.very D.too

3. A.keep B.repair C.sell D.throw

4.A.anxious B.lucky C.ashamed D.generous

5.A.some B.neither C.none D.most

6.A.delighted B.upset C.calm D.astonished

7.A.on B.up C.it D.that

8.A.learn B.miss C.get D.find

9.A.message B.advice C.request D.description

10.A.uses B.loses C.has D.spends

11.A.doubt B.help C.trouble D.answer

12.A.tell B.see C.agree D.call

13.A.exact B.suitable C.early D.late

14..A.follow B.meet C.bring D.introduce

15.A.recognize B.gain C.admire D.test

16.A.happening B.meaning C.turning D.failing

17.A.read B.inserted C.answered D.placed

18.A.forget B.show C.disagree D.admit

19.A.as B.that C.so D.such

20.A. bargain B.sale C.accident D.result

 

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