• Question: how do hurricanes work

    Asked by McDonald_drive_thru_worke to Stephanie, Rehemat, Christopher, Aileen on 14 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Stephanie Mann

      Stephanie Mann answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      Hurricanes are made from warm, wet air over oceans near the equator. As the air warms it rises, and suck new cooler air underneath it (like a slipstream behind a car). This new air also warms up and rises up, all this movement spins because of the earth spinning, bringing in new wet air all the time and adding to the spinning, wet cloudy storm. This big storm will move depending on where the pressure is lowest, often towards land but not always. Hurricanes often get worse in warm weather because warm air holds so much water, which is why we’ve seen so many “Super Hurricanes” in recent years – due to global warming.

    • Photo: Aileen Baird

      Aileen Baird answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      Stephanie has answered this for me- nothing more for me to add here!

    • Photo: Christopher Nankervis

      Christopher Nankervis answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      Great question. Hurricanes are formed in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. An Easterly wind that blows off Africa moves these storms toward the United States. First of all the sea surface needs to be warmer than 26 degrees C. Severe thunderstorms then begin to form over these warm and moist areas and join together to form larger groups of storms. The warm and moist air in the centre of these storms is very buoyant and therefore rises quickly. In a hurricane the eye of the storm is where these upward winds are strongest and the pressure is lowest. As the air rises it also starts to circulate anticlockwise very quickly. The large amount of energy makes the winds very strong and damaging around the edge of this “eye” where hurricane force winds sustained at more than 100 kilometres per hour are found.

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