CompuWorld

It will huff, and puff, and blow the house in — but only for research purposes.

Just in time for the beginning of the hurricane season, the University of Florida (UF) engineers have built the world’s largest portable hurricane wind simulator. Mounted on a trailer, the device is composed of eight 5-foot-tall industrial fans powered by four marine diesel engines. This simulator can produce winds of up to 130 mph, the equivalent of a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. It was designed to learn about how hurricanes damage homes and how to make them more hurricane-resistant.

UF civil and coastal engineers plan to use the simulator to blast vacant homes with winds of up to 130 mph — Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale — and high-pressure water jets that mimic wind-driven torrential rain.

The goal: to learn more about exactly how hurricanes damage homes, and how to modify them to best prevent that damage.

So next time you feel like hurricanes coming, be rest assured its just simulated ;)