It may be NW-SE, SW-NE, or just W-E, but it’s almost always this way. Why not E-W?
In: 10
There are dominant, “global” wind patterns on the earth due to hot air rising at the warmer regions and sinking at cooler ones.
This creates a general trend for wind to rise or sink based on latitude. here is a website that lets you explore weather data in a nice visual:
[https://earth.nullschool.net/#2022/05/11/2100Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-163.06,12.90,651](https://earth.nullschool.net/#2022/05/11/2100Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-163.06,12.90,651)
The link i gave shows the pacific, you can drag around. Using the ‘earth’ label in the lower left you can navigate to different days, features, altitudes (by changing the pressure..lower pressure is higher altitude) etc.
But before you do that, notice how the winds over the equator over the entire pacific are going west. This happens all year with only a few short term exceptions. Up north of hawaii it’s a bit less uniform, but you get a lot of wind heading east, again…all year long.
This is because at the 30-40 latitude lines the hot air from the air tends to sink, and this sinking motion interacts with the rotating earth to deflect east. The rising air at the equator tends to be deflected west. This is all due to conservation of angular momentum.
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