Hurricanes are examples of tropical cyclones—rotating, low-pressure storm systems with winds exceeding 74 mph (119 kph). They form between the Caribbean Sea and West Africa, as well as the warm waters west of Mexico and Central America.
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A specialized fleet of Air Force planes is built to fly into hurricanes and gather critical data from inside the storm. Beyond radar and microwave sensors, the planes are equipped with dropsondes—small instruments dropped into storms to measure pressure, temperature, and wind.
Typhoon Tip traveled across the western Pacific Ocean in 1979, achieving winds of 300 kilometers per hour. Though it weakened significantly before making landfall in Japan, its rainfall produced over 600 mudslides and killed 42 people.
A storm surge is an abnormal rise in water levels generated by a storm that exceeds predicted tides. It is particularly dangerous in coastal regions, where it can generate extreme flooding well before the hurricane makes landfall.
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NASA’s Convective Processes Experiment—Cabo Verde studied the early stages of hurricane formation, identifying how dust interacts with clouds over the ocean to produce the rainy disturbances that become tropical cyclones.
A recent study suggests that, since 1930, more than 3.5 million people have died due to hurricanes. This incorporates the long-term effects of storms on people's health and economic well-being, contributing to thousands of premature deaths each year.
The movement of an object across latitudes causes it to take a curved trajectory because its speed no longer matches that of the ground beneath it. This phenomenon, called the Coriolis effect, explains why hurricanes spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
Oceans are providing increasingly more energy to power hurricane intensity. Current projections show rapid intensification is becoming more common, increasing the likelihood of Category 4 and 5 storms.
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a rating system that organizes hurricanes into one of five categories. Categories three and higher are classified as major hurricanes, but all categories can produce deadly storm surges and rain-induced floods.
The eye is a calm, clear central area surrounded by an eyewall of intense thunderstorms. Rainbands are spiral bands of clouds and thunderstorms extending from the eyewall.
When standing in the eye of a hurricane, you're likely to experience sunny, cloudless skies surrounded by a wall of intense winds and thunderstorms. The physics behind this formation is the same as what causes water to spiral around a hollow cone as it goes down a drain.
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