Why do hurricanes follow such peculiar tracks?

And why do they follow such peculiar tracks. Hurricanes that threatened the United States start their lives over the Sahara Desert in Africa. They move out over the Atlantic Ocean to build into tropical storms and then hurricanes. While they're over the Atlantic near the equator, hurricanes are pushed toward the United States by trade winds. Trade winds are very consistent westward wind ends near the equator. Once the storm

rises up towards twenty five or thirty degrees latitude. The top of Florida is at a latitude of thirty degrees, the trade winds are no longer a factor, and local weather over the United States has a big influence. Winds along the East Coast tend to blow in a north or northeast direction, and there's also the eastward blowing jet stream. The northern winds often cause a storm to make a sudden right hand turn and track right up the east coast. The jet stream can cause storms to approach the east

coast and then back off. Any number of fronts or pressure zones may be in place over the United States as the hurricane comes in, and these systems have their own winds and can influence a hurricane as well. If a storm tracks from the west and doesn't get far enough north to lose the effect of the trade winds, it will instead continue westward into the Gulf of Mexico with those trade winds and land in Texas or Mexico. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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