Robie Shaw, age 8, of Scarboro, Me., for his question:

WHAT IS A HURRICANE?

A hurricane is often considered nature's most destructive force. Pounding rains and whirling winds reaching up to 150 to 200 miles per hour strike with such force roofs are ripped from houses, cars swept from roads and trains brushed off their tracks. These enormously powerful windstorms originate suddenly in the usually gentle weathered tropics. Roaring northward across thousands of miles of sea and shore, they are still not completely understood except in terms of their devastation.

Following the disastrous hurricanes Connie and Diane, which struck the unprepared East Coast in 1955 and caused billions of dollars in damage, the National Hurricane Center was set up at Miami, Fla. Here, scientists work around the clock to locate and track hurricanes, trying to predict their paths so that warning can be issued. Vitally important to gathering information about hurricanes are the fleet of airplanes and pilots supplied by the armed forces and the Weather Bureau. These planes actually fly into a hurricane in orderito precisely pinpoint the location of the storm's center. They also help determine its force and various other factors governing its path and life span.