What is a Hurricane

1 year ago

Hurricanes begin with wind, and wind starts with high-pressure air pushing toward an area of low-pressure.
In a major storm, wind sweeps across substantial distances, gaining tremendous momentum along the way.
The wind's part towards its destination is affected by Earth's rotation in what's called the Coriolis effect.
Let's say a mass of equatorial air veers north to fill a low-pressure pocket.
It will arrive just east—to the right—of the low-pressure system.
It misses the mark because the wind originates from a location on the globe that rotates faster than its destination, which hasn't caught up in its eastward rotation. Passing the low-pressure system on the right, the high-pressure winds now actually bend around the low-pressure zone, swirling in a counterclockwise fashion.
In the Northern hemisphere, cyclonic storms (called hurricanes in some places, typhoons or cyclones in others) always turn counterclockwise around the low-pressure eye.
In the Southern hemisphere, they rotate clockwise

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