How do hurricanes happen

End Zone. Veterans Day. Taking Care of Business. Morning Break. First Alert Weather Podcast. About Us. Contact Us. Antenna Tips. Latest Newscasts. Investigate TV. Gray DC Bureau. Dismiss Weather Alerts Alerts Bar. How do hurricanes form? By Dave Turley. Updated: Mar. Share on Facebook. Email This Link. Share on Twitter. Share on Pinterest. Share on LinkedIn. Most Read. Train kills 3 trying to escape SUV stuck on Georgia tracks. The whole system of clouds and wind spins and grows, fed by the ocean's heat and water evaporating from the surface.

Storms that form north of the equator spin counterclockwise. Storms south of the equator spin clockwise. This difference is because of Earth's rotation on its axis. As the storm system rotates faster and faster, an eye forms in the center. It is very calm and clear in the eye, with very low air pressure. Higher pressure air from above flows down into the eye. If you could slice into a tropical cyclone, it would look something like this.

The small red arrows show warm, moist air rising from the ocean's surface, and forming clouds in bands around the eye. The blue arrows show how cool, dry air sinks in the eye and between the bands of clouds. The large red arrows show the rotation of the rising bands of clouds. When the winds in the rotating storm reach 39 mph, the storm is called a "tropical storm. Tropical cyclones usually weaken when they hit land, because they are no longer being "fed" by the energy from the warm ocean waters.

However, they often move far inland, dumping many inches of rain and causing lots of wind damage before they die out completely. Above 9 km, winds spiral outwards and clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. Hurricanes do an important job for the Earth. They help move heat from warm tropical places to the cooler temperate zone.

To do this, they typically form between 5 to 15 degrees latitude north and south of the equator. Then, they thunder across the warm oceans of the world such as the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Western Pacific Ocean where they are called typhoons , up to higher latitudes.

Hurricanes happen when the oceans have been warmed during summer months. In the North Atlantic, hurricane season is from June 1 to November 30, but most hurricanes happen during the fall. This mound of water becomes dangerous when the storm reaches land because it causes flooding along the coast.