The Gulf of Mexico tends to be the area where hurricanes develop this early in the season. Lots of rain. Lots Of Rain. But the winds tend to be tame.
It is usually late July/August before the more severe hurricanes start developing off the western coast of Africa and aim towards the eastern United States.
... Tropical cyclones draw their devastating power from the warmth of the ocean, but many of these storms can be traced back to a desert thousands of miles from where they cause damage.
"If you have ever been in a car crash and remember the screeching of brakes, the impact of the metal scraping, the glass breaking, the groaning of objects smashing," says Jane Higgins, from her home in the US Virgin Islands. "That is just a titbit of what Irma sounded like."
Higgins is one of 51,000 residents on St Thomas who saw their Caribbean island devastated by the powerful Category Five hurricane on 6 September 2017. Four days later Hurricane Irma made a second landfall on the coast of Florida, where the damage it caused made it the costliest hurricane the state had ever experienced, and the fifth-costliest in US history.
The origins of this storm, however, can be traced more than 3,700 miles (5,955km) from the east of Florida. A week earlier, at the tail end of August 2017, a low pressure system had formed above the Cape Verde archipelago off the coast of West Africa. As it moved away from the islands and across the Atlantic, it gathered strength " first becoming a tropical storm and then growing in intensity as it fed off the warm tropical waters until it became a hurricane.
It turns out that about 83% of major hurricanes -- categories 3, 4 and 5 -- that hit North America share the same birthplace as Irma. Those emerging from Cape Verde are among the most powerful and longest-lived tropical storms. This has led stormwatchers to look closely at the atmosphere above Africa for clues about what might be going on. What is it about the storms emerging from here that makes them so devastating? And is it possible to predict the most powerful hurricanes to give people in their path more time to prepare? ...
