Disaster Recipes: Hurricanes 101

The upcoming 2021 hurricane season is looking to be "above average" — which isn't a good thing for us earthlings. In case you're wondering how hurricanes work, I thought it would be useful to gather all that information in one place like a cooking recipe. In addition, I throw in a few more factoids that I found that help to explain WHY hurricane season 2021 is looking to be a lot different than 2020's.

Ingredients

To create a hurricane, you'll need a few things:

• a body of water (use an ocean if you have one)
• a water heating method

Steps

1. First, heat the body of water sufficiently.
2. Take note of the warm moist air starting to rise because water begins to evaporate.
3. As that warm air rises, it leaves a lower air pressure area above the water.
4. The lower pressure area gets replaced by cooler air from surrounding higher pressure areas.
5. That cooler air gets warm and rises, too. And in turn, opens up a new lower pressure area.
6. As this continues over many cycles, expect clouds to form higher up in the air as the moisture accumulates.
7. Notice how the wind speeds are rising while all this happens because of the movement of air.
8. Expect layers of moist air to spin around a center to form an increasingly worsening storm.
9. If it gets enough spinning momentum and there's plenty of high pressure air that keeps getting injected into the system, the storm will evolve into a hurricane.

You can watch this all in animated form thanks to NOAA:

Keep In Mind They're All "Tropical Cyclones"

The terms "hurricane" and "typhoon" and "cyclone" are synonymous — which one you use will depend upon which area of the world you're in. They all belong to a scientific family of meteorological phenomena called "tropical cyclones."

The word "hurricane" is used for when the tropical cyclone happens over the Atlantic Ocean and the east side of the Pacific Ocean. If you live in Asia, you're more likely to hear the word "typhoon" used; in the Middle East or Africa you might hear them more often as "cyclones."

What's The "Eye" All About?

Over time, these storms start to spin. Depending upon how fast they spin, they'll get called either a regular storm, a "tropical storm," or a "tropical cyclone." If winds break 39 mph it's a "tropical storm" and when breaking 74 mph it gets dubbed a "tropical cyclone," or "hurricane."

Because of how the earth constantly spinning around on its axis, when you cook your hurricane north of the equator, it will spin counterclockwise. Cooking it south of the equator? Then it'll spin clockwise.

As the spinning starts to get intense, the so-called "eye of the hurricane" starts to form. This spot at the center of the storm is primarily low pressure, and so the higher pressure air sitting at the top will find itself being pulled into the eye.

What's El Ni?o And La Ni?a Effect's Impact On Hurricanes?

El Ni?o roughly refers to the warming of the waters in the Pacific Ocean; La Ni?a roughly refers to the cooling of the waters in the Pacific Ocean. El Ni?o is associated with suppressing hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. La Ni?a is associated with encouraging increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. Experts are worried that in this upcoming hurricane season there will be no El Ni?o effect — therefore there will be less suppression of tropical cyclones. Meanwhile it's in the air (sic) whether La Ni?a will encourage more tropical cyclones.

When Do Hurricanes Go Away?

Because hurricanes are fueled by the water beneath them, when they start to travel over land they lose their "fuel." But they dump all the water they've accumulated — which is why it can feel like an entire ocean pouring on top of you when you're in the middle of one. So they've essentially stopped feeding on the ocean, and are dumping everything they've "eaten" all over us. And they can lead to terrible harm when they do.

"It only takes one storm to devastate a community." —Ben Friedman, acting NOAA Administrator

Resources From Everbridge Experts

At Everbridge, we keep people safe and organizations running. Faster.

• Severe Weather Checklist
• Tip Sheet: Safety Communications During Severe Weather
• Video: Communication Lessons from Hurricane Harvey

Related Content

Disaster Recipes: Wildfires 101 is now available.

Disaster Recipes: Floods 101 is now available.

Sources

• July 2021 photos of Hurricane Elsa by NASA astronaut Megan McArthur
• 2020 Atlantic Hurricanes in Context and Technological Evolution
• NASA.gov: How Do Hurricanes Form?
• NOAA.gov: El Nino and La Nina
• Climate.gov: Impacts of El Ni?o and La Ni?a on Hurricane Season
• Weather.com: Atlantic Hurricane Season 2021
• Man.com: Hurricane Density highest in Aug/Sept/Oct