Climate change and El Niño are contributing to conditions in the eastern Pacific that make hurricanes more likely.
Hurricane Hilary, upgraded from a tropical storm, could slam Southern California and the southwestern U.S. this weekend with heavy rain, wind and surf.What has kept the hurricanes away from California for so long? The answer lies in two factors that fend off hurricanes: cold sea surface temperatures and high vertical wind shear.
Cold sea surface temperatures suppress hurricane formation because hurricanes get their energy and moisture by evaporating surface waters, which is much harder to do when the water is cold. Because of ocean currents, the waters of the western Pacific are far colder — by as much as 9 degrees — than the same latitude in the eastern Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico.
Vertical wind shear is a term for the change in wind speed and direction as you travel up from the Earth’s surface, which is important because hurricanes extend almost 10 miles into the atmosphere.
Finally, hurricanes are guided by winds and in the tropical regions where hurricanes form these winds tend to travel from east to west, blowing hurricanes into the eastern coasts of Asia and North America but not into western coasts.
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