When predicting potential damage from tropical storms, location is crucial, particularly if you’re on the “dirty” side of the hurricane, where winds can reach 50% stronger.
It can be challenging to forecast hurricanes. A hurricane’s direction and speed are determined by a complex interplay between the Earth’s atmosphere, internal storm circulations, and the storm itself. Hurricanes can change in direction and speed due to high- and low-pressure systems, and the air they move through is always changing and moving.
They can accelerate to 60 mph (97 km/h) and travel in a straight line, or they can wobble and loop. Usually moving at a pace of 15 to 20 mph (24 to 32 km/h), some linger and cause devastatingly severe rain and flooding.
Hurricane Season 2024
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) predicts that 2024 will be “the most aggressive forecast on record” for hurricanes, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which is warning the public to get ready.
Communities in Louisiana were devastated by flooding as Hurricane Francine slammed the southern US with strong winds and heavy rainfall, while thousands in Alabama and Mississippi lost power.
In the northern hemisphere, hurricanes also have a right and a left side, referred to as the “dirty” and “clean” sides, respectively. However, in the southern hemisphere, the roles are reversed; the left side becomes the dirty side as a result of the hurricane’s winds spiraling clockwise around its center, as opposed to counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere.
Hurricanes have a nasty side, which meteorologist Robert Rogers of Noaa’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Florida, discusses.
Why is one side of a hurricane more deadly than the other?
One side of a cyclone typically experiences stronger winds than the other; this is known as asymmetry. This is due to a number of factors, the main one being that the storm’s motion adds to the hurricane’s background circulation. This indicates that winds have a tendency to be greater on the right side of the storm’s path in the northern hemisphere. In a similar vein, winds have a tendency to be weaker to the left of their direction. On the right side of the storm motion, the side with the strongest winds is the dirty side. Once more in the northern hemisphere, the clean side is the left side of storm motion.
Why is the dirty side more dangerous, and by how much?