preview

Hurricane Development

Decent Essays

Meteorologists have made the lives of the general public as simple as it can be by dividing the development of a hurricane into four stages: tropical disturbance, tropical depression, tropical storm, and a full-fledged hurricane. During a tropical disturbance, water vapor from the warm ocean water condenses to form clouds, which in turn discharges heat into the air. Additionally, the heated air rises and is pulled into the column of clouds. The continued evaporation and condensation is what constructs the cloud columns to be higher and grander. Nevertheless, a pattern develops whereby wind begins to circulate around a center (much like water going down a funnel). The moving column of air continues to combat more clouds, which in turn becomes …show more content…

This results in the air at the top of the cloud column to cool and become volatile. Not only does heat energy release from the cooling water vapor, the air at the top of the clouds becomes warmer. Furthermore, air pressure increases and causes winds to move away from the high-pressure area, which causes pressures at the surface to drop. After this chaos, the air at the surface moves towards the lower pressure area, rises, and creates more thunderstorms. A tropical storm, which is the last step before becoming a full-fledged hurricane and/or tropical cyclone, is when the wind speed reaches thirty-nine miles per hour. At this point in the formation of a hurricane, the storm is finally assigned a name. During a tropical storm, winds simply begin to blow faster and turn around the eye of the storm. It is during a tropical storm when a phenomenon known as the Coriolis effect, the opposite direction of circulation, is recognizable. In the northern hemisphere, wind direction is counterclockwise (west to east), while in the southern hemisphere, wind direction is clockwise (east to

Get Access