Why doesn’t the western coast of the US get hurricanes or tropical storms? And how do hurricanes on the eastern coast have the energy to move so far inland/north once they make landfall?
In: Planetary Science
Hurricanes get energy from warmer waters, and the water off the coast of California is too cool to power a hurricane.
When a Hurricane forms the natural winds tends to drive them north and west, so a Hurricane in the Caribbean can be driven into the United State East coast.
Tropical cyclones can also form further south around the West coast of Mexico, but if they are driven north the natural air currents will drive them West into the Pacific rather than into California.
Ocean currents also run clockwise, with colder arctic waters coming south on the right-side of oceans. So warmer tropical waters flow on the left side of the ocean.
This is why Japan gets all the Typhoons instead of California.
The southern west coast of the US does get an occasional hurricane – last year we got *t h i s* close to having one land before it became a tropical depression.
Hawaii received hurricanes every year or two, or less. Mexicos west coast sees a lot of them.
With global warming we can all expect to have more hurricane events along more US coast lines.
Big storms like warm water. The water on the west coast is generally far too cool to allow the big storms generated in the southern latitudes to maintain their structure. Once they hit the cooler water it starts to degrade. That’s why TS Hilary was such a big deal. It’s very rare to even have a TS level storm out here. Even if an actual hurricane did make it ashore, the topography would start to shred it apart pretty quickly.
The storms on the east coast are able to move so far inland because of the warm water that surrounds the land mass. Couple that with flat land masses once it comes ashore and you get an highly energized storm that is able to continue inland with little resistance from the high elevations that tend to shred these storms.
Latest Answers