How does a hurricane form and why are they only in the tropics?

Question

I live in the Caribbean so I have plenty of experience of hurricanes but have never understood how clouds begin to rotate and turn into hurricanes and why storms in northern latitudes not rotate into hurricanes but can have very strong winds and rain. It has been explained to me before, but not like I’m 5, so I never quite got it. Thanks for any answers.

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

Hurricanes are giant, powerful storms that form over warm ocean water, and they’re driven by the energy from that warmth. To understand how they form, imagine the ocean’s surface like a giant pot of water that has been heating up under the summer sun. When the surface temperature of the water gets really warm, the water starts evaporating into the air a lot, creating a lot of moisture. This warm, moist air rises because warm air is lighter than cool air. As it rises, more air on ground level rushes in to fill the gap, and that starts a cycle: warm air rises, cools down, and the moisture in it condenses into clouds and rain, and at the same time cold air flows in at ground level.

As more and more warm air rises, it creates a zone of very low pressure at the ocean’s surface. In other words, the air pressure inside this area drops, pulling in even more air from around. Now, because of the Earth’s rotation, the air doesn’t move straight toward the center. Instead, it spirals. This happens due to a phenomenon called the Coriolis effect. The Coriolis effect causes moving air to turn slightly because the Earth is spinning. In the Northern Hemisphere, it makes the air curve to the right, which results in a counterclockwise rotation of the storm. In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the opposite, and the storm spins clockwise.

Hurricanes only form close to the equator, because that’s where the water is warm enough. But they don’t form right at the equator itself, because there’s almost no Coriolis effect there. That means there’s not enough “twist” to make the storm rotate and grow into a hurricane. And as you go farther north, the water gets too cold to fuel these storms making it hard for hurricanes to sustain themselves.
Therefore Hurricanes can actually at some point arrive in places like europe but at that point they are usually too weak to be classified as a hurricane anymore.