How does typhoon happen

Tropical cyclones usually weaken when they hit land, because they are no longer being "fed" by the energy from the warm ocean waters. However, they often move far inland, dumping many inches of rain and causing lots of wind damage before they die out completely.

The two GOES satellites keep their eyes on hurricanes from far above Earth's surface—22, miles above, to be exact! Learn more about this kind of orbit. These satellites, built by NASA and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA , save lives by helping weather forecasters predict and warn people where and when these severe storms will hit land.

Our World: What is a Hurricane? Here is a movie of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the coast of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi on August 29, , as a Category 3. This movie was made from images taken by the GOES weather satellite. In the movie you can see the storm starting to form in the Atlantic on August 24 and becoming more and more organized as it moves over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

How Do Hurricanes Form? As the resulting drop in atmospheric pressure keeps intensifying, winds with ever greater speeds are attracted to the depression, and soon a tropical cyclone may be born. When the wind speeds at the center of such storms rise above a threshold value of kilometers per hour, the storms are then officially known as typhoons.

After they are formed, these typhoons tend to travel following either one of three types of paths: a straight track, a parabolic recurving track, and a northward track, each affecting any land that falls in their paths of movement. These tropical cyclones frequently originate in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, usually in the tropical seas around the Caroline Islands and the Philippines , and occasionally also arise from the South China Sea.

Taiwan , Japan , the Philippines, and China are the largest countries that are most affected by typhoons. Although the U. A, India , and Australia also experience tropical cyclones, they are known by different names in those countries. Typhoons have claimed thousands upon thousands of lives on our planet since prehistoric times, and continue to do so in the present century.

Though these storms are quite frequent in occurrence, some are more dangerous than the others. With winds gusting between 75 and miles per hour, typhoons are some of the most impressive storms on the planet. The destructive power of typhoons makes early warning and preparation vital, which is why meteorologists work hard to answer two very important questions about typhoons: Where do typhoons occur, and how do they form?

The answers to these questions allow scientists to make lifesaving predictions about when and where typhoons will occur. Instead, they begin as something called a tropical wave. These regularly form in the tropics, where the sun shines directly for most of the year.

Because warm air can hold water better than cool air, low-pressure systems like tropical waves are warmer and wetter than the surrounding air, and they often appear carrying clouds. In this zone prevailing winds push westward from South America toward Asia and Australia. As the tropical wave moves westward, warm, wet ocean air is added to the wave, increasing its size.

If the sea surface under the tropical wave is at least Other conditions have to be met for the tropical wave to become a full typhoon. The heat causes more air to flow to the centre of the storm causing evaporation. All the heat and air flow toward the eye creating the typhoon. This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff. Non-subscribers can read and sort comments but will not be able to engage with them in any way.

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