How Hurricanes Start

People living in Florida know all too well the devastation that can be caused by hurricanes. In Florida, they frequently cause enough damage to have people Google “hurricane windows near me”, so that they can buy impact windows and doors. They form next to the equator over warm waters in the ocean. The term hurricane is only used for storms which form over either the Pacific Ocean, or the Atlantic.

Where do they start?

The generic term for these terms is tropical cyclone. Other names that are given, depending on where they first begin, are cyclones, typhoons, severe tropical cyclones or severe cyclonic storms. Whatever their name, the same condition and forces are at play in forming these giant storms, which can cause devastation and damage when they hit areas where people live.

Tropical cyclones can be thought of as engines which require warm, wet air as fuel. This means that the first ingredient which is require for a tropical cyclone is warm water from the ocean. This is the reason why tropical cyclones only form in tropical regions where the top 50 meters of the ocean is at least 80 degrees F.

Cape Verde islands

The second element of a tropical cyclone is, of course, wind. In cases where hurricanes form over the Atlantic Ocean, the wind which blows westward across the Atlantic from Africa provides this. As the wind passes on top of the surface of the ocean, water turns to vapor and rises. As this happens, the water vapor cools and condenses into large droplets of water, and forms cumulonimbus clouds. These clouds are just the start.

Meteorologists have been able to divide the development of a tropical cyclone into four distinct stages: Tropical disturbance, tropical depression, tropical storm and finally a fully-formed tropical cyclone.

1. Tropical disturbance

When the water vapor from a warm ocean condenses and forms clouds, it begins to release heat into the air. This warmed air then rises and is stretched into columns of clouds. Condensation and evaporation continue, and the columns get higher and larger. A pattern develops, and the wind circulates around the center. As this moving column of air comes into contact with more clouds, it become a cluster of clouds, known as a tropical disturbance.

2. Tropical depression

As the thunderstorm keeps growing, the air located at the top of the cloud column cools and becomes unstable. The heat energy is released from cooling water vapor, and air located at the top of the clouds becomes warmer in temperature, thus making the air pressure higher and resulting in winds moving outward, away from the area of high pressure. This warming and movement causes pressure at the surface to plummet. Air at the surface then moves towards the area of lower pressure, rises, and creates yet more thunderstorms. When the winds reach 25 to 38 mph, the storm is known as a tropical depression.

3. Tropical storm

When the speed of the wind gets to 39mph, the tropical depression then becomes known as a tropical storm. This is when the storm is given a name. The windows keep blowing faster and begin turning and twisting around the eye of the storm. The wind direction is counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. This is known as the Coriolis effect.

4. Hurricane

When the speed of the winds reaches 74 mph, the storm is now known as a hurricane. The eye will now be around 5 to 30 miles wide. The trade winds (which blow east to west) thrust the hurricane in the direction of the west, which is towards the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico or the southeastern coast of the United States. The wind and low air pressure causes a huge mound of ocean water to collect in the eye of a hurricane, which causes enormous storm surges when the storm reaches land.

Hurricanes tend to weaken when they hit dry land, as they are no longer being fed energy warm ocean waters. However, they can move far inland as depressions, dumping inches of rain and causing a great deal of wind damage before they completely die.

It’s no good searching for “hurricane windows near me” when the hurricane is already on the way! There is no one willing to install impact windows and doors in the eye of a storm!

Make sure you are prepared well before the hurricane hits land. You do not want to be rushing to prepare before hurricane season.