![]() ![]() Hurricane Ginger, 1981 and Tropical Storm Gordon, 1994. Also shown is Tropical Storm Gordon, 1994, which seemingly slalomed between Caribbean islands as it moved north to strike Florida a couple of times. It did that with relatively little variation in latitude. ![]() In Figure 9, you can see Hurricane Ginger, 1971, which went about 20° longitude eastward before turning around and heading back westward. Sometimes storms can also alternate between big swings east and west. ![]() Two storms that went both north and south, doing loop-the-loops. Hurricanes Lili, 1984 and Not Named, 1934. Perhaps even more oddly, Hurricane Lili, 1984, started over in the mid-Atlantic at the latitude of North Carolina, then went on a looping route south and east, again ending up at the Dominican Republic, about 15° latitude farther south than where it began. The unnamed 1934 hurricane actually started fairly far south in the middle of the ocean, went north to whack Bermuda, then looped around and went south and east and ended over the Dominican Republic, further south than it originated. Here are a couple that broke that assumption. I assume tropical storms will generally move south-to-north over their lifespan in the northern hemisphere, since they are part of a global system to move heat from the equator to the poles. Take a look at the pictures or click on the HHT link to explore them more thoroughly on the Historical Hurricane Tracks site. These are just tracks I thought were quite odd and made me question my assumptions about how hurricanes “generally” behave. On a somewhat related note, I thought I’d share a few interesting storm tracks I’ve stumbled across while using the HHT site. That is why it is important to rely upon the predictions from NOAA’s National Hurricane Center for each storm and to pay attention to watches and warnings when they are issued. They can just as often go in completely different directions. Direct HHT link.įrom just this small sample, I think we can conclude that, although hurricanes can follow the tracks of previous storms, it isn’t really something to be relied upon. Three September hurricanes with very different tracks. Three September storms with relatively straight paths. Four storms in September with C-shaped tracks. Of these ten storms, four followed relatively similar C-shaped tracks (Figure 5), three had somewhat more straight tracks before curving, if at all (Figure 6) and the remaining three were clearly Frank Sinatra fans, since they did things “their way” (Figure 7). Ten long-lived hurricanes that passed near 11N, 55W in September. ![]() That leave 10 strong, longer-lived storms to examine, Figure 4. The Historical Hurricane Tracks site shows 15 storms met these criteria, but I’m going to omit two storms that remained tropical depressions and three storms that lasted less than a week, so didn’t have much of a track to examine. For this example, I’ll pick September and a location at 11° N., 55° W. What about storms that passed through the same area at similar times? Let’s take a look at all the storms that went within 100 miles of a location during one month. Of course, storm dynamics can vary throughout the year, so perhaps the above storms were not a good sample. An example of three hurricanes that had similar tracks over much of their length, but then one diverged greatly. Hurricanes Bill, 2009 Igor, 2010 and Andrew, 1992. You can also examine these storms directly on the HHT web site. Check out Hurricane Andrew, 1992,and see how similar it was to Bill and Igor over about half of its track but then it “turned left” when they “went right” (Figure 3). However, does this mean that we can use tracks that start similarly to predict where a particular storm will go? Not really. Hurricane tracks of Hurricanes Bill, 2009 and Igor, 2010, showing similarity in their tracks. Hurricanes Bill, 2009 and Igor, 2010 (Figure 2.) illustrate this “pattern.” Figure 2. Warmer colors indicate stronger winds.įrom a casual examination of those tracks, it does appear that, within each basin, there might be a general pattern, somewhat similar to the Nike Swoosh, or a large letter C: storms move westward and, sooner or later turn poleward, then head back to the east and poleward. Figure 1 shows the tracks of all tropical storms in the IBTrACS archive, 1848 – 2013. The Historical Hurricane Tracks (HHT) site shows the data from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship ( IBTrACS), a compilation of tropical cyclone tracks from meteorological observing centers around the globe. I am occasionally asked if one could use the Historical Hurricanes Tracks web site to look at past hurricane tracks to find a storm similar to some current one and then use that previous storm track to predict where some current storm is going. With the traditional North Atlantic hurricane season about to begin on June 1, interest in previous tropical storms has begun to rise. ![]()
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