Category: North America

ON THE FORMATION OF TROPICAL CYCLONES
Every year there are around 30 to 100 tropical cyclones worldwide. They are known as hurricanes in the Caribbean, typhoons in the Indonesian region and Willy Willies in Australia. Hurricanes occur mainly between June and November.

Tropical cyclones can only develop over seas with water temperatures of at least 26 to 28 degrees Celsius. The warm, humid and therefore unstable air masses stored over these water surfaces rise in the area of ​​influence of the Innertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and form mighty cloud towers, so-called cloud clusters. Aged cold air masses that advance from the north over the warm tropical sea surfaces can intensify this process. The energy released during the condensation of the rising air parcels gives the air an additional lift and represents the actual drive source of the characteristic vortex formation.

It is only when the air masses begin to rotate that a tropical cyclone develops. Easterly Waves, small low pressure eddies that form under the eastern tropical high-altitude currents of the African Easterly Jet, set the rising cloud masses in a circulation movement.

The Coriolis force maintains this process. Since the deflecting force due to the earth’s rotation is only large enough to initiate vortex formation from about the sixth to eighth degree of latitude, a cyclone-free zone extends on both sides of the equator. For more information about the continent of North America, please check ehistorylib.com.