Ocean storms are often extremely fierce, but they rapidly weaken and dissipate once they make landfall. What happens to them?
How do storms form?
Storms typically occur over the ocean between the 5th and 20th degrees latitude in each hemisphere, forming in tropical ocean regions where warm water is present. This natural phenomenon requires a minimum sea surface temperature of 26 degrees Celsius and a depth of at least 50 meters below the water surface.
Warm water creates a strong evaporation process, causing moisture to rise and condense into clouds that produce thunderstorms. In the upper troposphere, this moist air expands and begins to rotate due to the Earth’s rotation. The rotational speed gradually increases, and the moisture-laden clouds grow larger, needing to accelerate their rotation as they encounter the stratosphere at an altitude of 16 kilometers. A vortex begins to take shape.
The devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Photo: gisuser.com.
When wind speeds reach 119 km/h, the vortex officially becomes a storm, with a region of extremely low pressure forming at the center of the spiral, known as the eye of the storm. This area sucks up all the moist air, replenishing the water vapor and forming increasingly larger clouds accompanied by continuous rainfall.
The warmer the sea surface, the more water evaporates, leading to an increase in the moist air feeding the vortex, which in turn accelerates the wind. Therefore, it can be said that the amount of water vapor is the energy of storms. This energy can sometimes reach levels equivalent to five nuclear bombs per second.
When a storm encounters a colder water current or makes landfall, it will lose intensity due to the lack of warm evaporating air. This is why storms typically weaken and dissipate when they move inland.
10 Facts You May Not Know About Storms
1. In English, storms are called “hurricanes,” which is believed to be a mispronunciation of the name of the fierce god of the South American indigenous peoples, “Hurracana.” In the East, ancient Chinese referred to storms as “Daifeng” (great wind), and later Western scientists used the term “typhoon” to refer to storms in the Pacific today. Storms in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal are called “cyclones,” while in Australia, they are referred to as “willy willy.”
Map of storm naming conventions in different regions around the world.
2. Historically, storms were either unnamed or given arbitrary names, sometimes named after the corresponding deity of the day the storm occurred. For example, the storm that struck Puerto Rico on July 26, 1825, was called “Santa Anna” because it fell on the feast day of Saint Anna in Christianity.
3. Australian meteorologist Clement Ragg once proposed a unique naming method: naming storms after lawmakers who did not vote to fund meteorological research.
4. During World War II, meteorologists in the U.S. Air Force and Navy studied storms in the Northwestern Pacific, and to avoid confusion, they named storms after their wives and girlfriends. After the war, the U.S. Weather Bureau compiled a list of storm names that included many easy-to-read, easy-to-remember, and simple names for women.
5. The naming rules for storms also depend on the time of year. The first storm of the year is named starting with the letter A (the first letter of the alphabet) and continues sequentially until the last storm of the year.
6. Some regions are prone to major storms, so there are different lists of names. There are six lists for storms forming in the Atlantic Ocean, each containing 21 names, used sequentially over six years before repeating. In the Pacific region, there is one list of 84 names.
7. In cases where a storm is particularly severe or has catastrophic consequences, its name may be retired from the list and replaced with another name. Hurricane Katrina is a prime example.
8. In Northeast Asia, storms are named after animals, flowers, trees, and even food, such as Nakri, Yufoong, Kanmuri, Copu, etc.
9. In Japan, storms are never named after women because women are perceived as calm, gentle, and warm in the Land of the Rising Sun. In India, storms are not named at all, simply referred to as “storms.”
10. The deadliest storm the world has faced since the early 20th century is the Bhola Cyclone, which struck the Bhola region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) on November 13, 1970. This devastating storm claimed the lives of 500,000 people, left 100,000 missing, obliterated many villages and homes, causing tens of thousands of families to experience tragedy, and left hundreds of thousands homeless and without shelter. The Bhola storm is recorded as the most destructive storm with severe consequences in modern human history.
