People can compare hurricane development to daily cooking instructions. A hurricane requires several ingredients to make the storm strong. If you take away or reduce some of the ingredients the hurricane will begin to weaken or lack the flavor of its true recipe.
The first and most possibly most important ingredient in hurricane development is water temperature. Hurricanes are considered warm-core systems, which means they require warm moisture to function and operate. The temperature threshold for tropical development is 80 F at the waters surface. The warm water increases the evaporation rate of the surface water. This in turn generates water vapor and cloud development. Along with very warm surface temps there needs to be a deep layer of warm water to continuously feed the storm. In late summer, Water temperatures within the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean reach these temps rather quickly due to the shallow ocean depth.
The next ingredient in hurricane development is the storm’s accessibility to moisture at all levels of the atmosphere. If the storm were to come into contact with a pocket of dry air the system will significantly begin to weaken in intensity.
A hurricane develops vertically as well as horizontally across a region of the Ocean. This can produce a system that covers large area. The high cloud development can be hindered if there is too much vertical shear at the hurricanes location. Shear is the change in direction of wind at different heights within the atmosphere. If there is too much shear the clouds at the top of the storm can blow away, which ultimately destroys the system.
The next thing to set a hurricane in motion is the creation of spin or rotation of the cloud and thunderstorms. The phenomena called Coriolis Effect is created by the spinning motion of the earth. The closer the storm is to the equator the weaker the rotation in the atmosphere, which can destroy the storm.
The last ingredient to the hurricane recipe is the collection of thunderstorms that flow off the coast of Africa into the Atlantic Ocean. These westward moving storms ,if strong enough, can be considered a tropical wave. As the thunderstorms and showers move across the ocean they can strengthen into stronger tropical disturbances but often times weaken and dissipate out at sea.
These required ingredients are needed to make or break a powerful Hurricane. Warm water, moisture, little shear, rotation, and tropical waves each play a important part in the storms cycle.
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