**THE** official weather question thread.

[Resident 2B]

Originally Posted by MAXUM

Cool stuff, thanks for the links! You explanation makes sense. Along the same lines is the extreme low pressure in the core of a hurricane a result of the storm's overall measured wind speed?

Although it is somewhat like the chicken and the egg argument, actually the wind is the result of the very low pressure supporting circulation in a hurricane.

A hurricane is a huge low pressure system with a very warm core. The lift in a tropical system is huge as is the outflow at the top of the storm. The rate of lift and height of lift develops a huge circulation as the storm builds. This happens best when there is little or no shear in the atmosphere The winds at the surface are the result of the vertical air movement at the center, the well distributed outflow at the top and the feeders into the core at the bottom.

Hurricanes need something called coriolis force to make them spin. This coriolis effect is strongest from 5 to 15 north of the equator in the summer. Too close to the equator and you do not get the spin. That is also why real hurricanes form mostly in the summer, however, the season seems to be getting longer each year. Global warming?

Here is a great link to a web page that is the best I know for a slightly technical explanation of hurricanes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone

For those technical folks, NOAA and the TPC have more technical details on their pages.

R2B