How Hurricanes Form
Hurricanes are heat engines that need a specific recipe — warm deep ocean water, moist air, low wind shear, a seed disturbance, and enough distance from the equator to spin. Here's how those ingredients build a storm, and what makes it fall apart.
Hurricanes don't appear from nowhere. They're heat engines that need a specific set of ingredients to spin up — which is why they form only over certain waters, at certain times of year. The ingredients Warm ocean water — at least about 80°F (26.5°C), and not only at the surface: that warmth has to reach down roughly 150 feet. The warm water is the fuel. A deep layer of moist air — dry air starves a developing storm, so the middle of the atmosphere needs to be humid. (In the Atlantic, the biggest source of hostile dry air is the Saharan Air Layer — more on that below.) Low wind shear — if win…
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