Why are hurricains so small ?

[arcticfire]

Greets everyone,

Was looking at an IR mosaic of the globe and this thought occured to me. Why are hurricains so tiny ? When looked at from a global perspective they are these pin prick little spinning dots. This question especially springs to mind with regards to the pacific. The ocean is so large and these storm have so long to play around out there I wounder what keeps them tiny?

[apocalypt-flyer]

Have you ever seen a picture of Typhoon Tip?

If you haven't, once you see it, you'll definately change your opinion

[scostorms]

[oneness]

They can be 10 degrees accross, or 1/36th of earth's circumference. Not exactly small.

[arcticfire]

Have you ever seen a picture of Typhoon Tip?

If you haven't, once you see it, you'll definately change your opinion

Still compared to the body of water it resided in it was small.

[jburns]

Still compared to the body of water it resided in it was small.

A fat person in a swimming pool is just as fat when they swim in the ocean.

[arcticfire]

Still compared to the body of water it resided in it was small.

A fat person in a swimming pool is just as fat when they swim in the ocean.

True but a goldfish in a huge body of water is a whole lot bigger then one in your little fishtank. I go back to my original question which was not "whats the largest hurricain" , it was what keeps these so small in relation to the ocean they are birthed in.

[Tampa Bay Hurricane]

Like a skater- when they make the area over which they spin smaller and smaller they go faster and faster. As the hurricane contracts
it gets faster and intensifies

[oneness]

Hurricanes are about pressure dynamics in an atmosphere which behaves as a fluid, they are not about the radial movement of a solid mass around a central vertical axis. The often-utilised solid spinning skater’s center-of-mass change analogy is quite inappropriate and misleading for such a fluid dynamics situation.

Furthermore, many of the most intense Cat 5 storms are often the very largest in area as well. The cloud shield of Katrina reached about 8 degrees across as winds began to peak at 175 mph, simultaneously. Rather large, expanding and intense, no?

i.e. contraction does not imply intensification, sometimes they coincide, often they don’t. I don’t think one necessarily indicates the other at all. In fact, Katrina, and many other storms do precisely the opposite of the skater analogy. They expand greatly as they intensify and the eye’s width (and core) also get larger in area to deal with the greater outflow volume. Numerous examples of this are known and particularly common in WPAC storms which grow enormous open eyes as they intensify and grow their wind-field and cloud area.

[Jim Cantore]

small!?!?!

Just look at the 3 hurricanes who have the anniversary of their landfalls surround this date.







those a 3 big masses of clouds

[Jim Cantore]

and I resized that Ivan picture it should be half that size!

[arcticfire]

A storm that takes up the entire gulf of mexico is still small when compared to the pacific ocean , most are a lot smaller then that. So please stop posting pictures of hurricains trying to prove me wrong. I mentioned in the original post this was mostly in relation to the pacific.

I would like to know what keeps them small in relation to the body of water around them. I can apreciate the idea of the saketer annalogy but it dosn't quite fit for me , for the same reasons oneness pointed out.

It would seem at first glance that a hurricain in the pacific should be able to or rather far more commonly grow huge. Take the example of a gulf of mexico hurricain , they can and do commonly grow to huge %'s of the whole gulf in size. Yet you take a much larger body of water , the pacific , with far less land to cause problems and the hurricains remain what seems to be able the same size as atlantic/gulf breed storms.

That leads to me to surmize that the size of the hurricain is not so much dependent on the size of the body of water it's over as it is on other phyicis that control it. Those are what I'm after. What factors control the size the hurricain can grow to ? What prevents for instance a hurricain from achiving the size of say 25% of the area of the pacific ?

[apocalypt-flyer]

You can't expect an area that huge to have totally favourable conditions, like no shear or dry are and high SSTs. That would be my explanation ..

[WeatherEmperor]

Gilbert in 1988 was pretty darn big as well.

<RICKY>

[jkt21787]

My opinion is, that compared to typical squall line thunderstorms and more significantly, tornadoes, that occur in the United States, the hurricane is huge and far more powerful in its scale of destruction possible.

A tornado can be more intense, but its damage path is very small. A hurricane can produce tornado like damage (even up to F-3/F-4) in a very wide area, as Katrina showed us.

So, really, if you think about it, Hurricanes/Typhoons/Cyclones are one our world's largest forces of nature out there.

[Meso]

Kind of ironic : Cold fronts are huge and don't do as much damage as hurricanes, Hurricanes are still fairly large and do extensive damage, and supercell thunderstorms are pretty small and usually release the most damage.

[wxmann_91]

Kind of ironic : Cold fronts are huge and don't do as much damage as hurricanes, Hurricanes are still fairly large and do extensive damage, and supercell thunderstorms are pretty small and usually release the most damage.

Extratropical cyclones and their associated cold fronts use temperature differences (what's that term?) for their source of energy. Hurricanes purely are warm-core, meaning their source of energy comes from the warm ocean, which holds much more potential energy.

[arcticfire]

You can't expect an area that huge to have totally favourable conditions, like no shear or dry are and high SSTs. That would be my explanation ..

True , but is it the outlying environmental factors that would inhibit the core growth ? If you have for instance 20knt sheer 200nm away from the core sheering off a part of of the outter cloud mass would that really cause that big of a difference to the inner core structure?

Perhaps I can help answer my own question here. Would it perchance have to do with the maximum hight the core can reach ? There is tons of space horizontaly for it to expand , but there is only so much space betweeen the ocean and the upper atmosphere. Since it can only deepen so far perhaps thats what prevents it from exapanded past a certain point ?

[Astro_man92]

Greets everyone,

Was looking at an IR mosaic of the globe and this thought occurred to me. Why are hurricanes so tiny ? When looked at from a global perspective they are these pin prick little spinning dots. This question especially springs to mind with regards to the pacific. The ocean is so large and these storm have so long to play around out there I wonder what keeps them tiny?

K, here is my explanation to this question. Now try to visualize everything that I’m saying. It will back it a bit easier to understand.

K your question (above) is wondering why the hurricanes in the pacific are so tiny. Well the fact is they are not but that isn't your question. K try to visualize the Pacific Ocean (below).
It is huge as you can see. There are also Wind belts that go across the earth (below)
They help spin Tropical waves. Hurricanes orrucur in the tropical easterlies and tropical westerlies I think they can go higher than 30° latitude but not if the jet stream is there to tear them up (someone correct me please). They can only occur there though and they can't usually occure within 5° of the equator. So in the pacific, Hurricanes have only a small space that they can form and usually exist in and strengthen. Now also the conditions have to be right also. Usually to me (being less then amature) that doesn't occur in a very large area. So the reason why they stay so Small is because they have little room to move and get as large as you might be imagining. plus I think it is imposible for a hurricane to take up 25% of the pacific because It can't get to close to the equator or it loses its spin. It can't go to far nor because of the jet stream and the cold water. and you also have all those other weather systems and weather anomolies that can disrupt it so it is more pratical for a hurricane to take up 10% of the pacific. but i estimate that that is rare to because of conditions again and that maybe 1,000,000 - 1.

(Some one please correct me in anything i have explained wrong or add somting i forgot)

[StormsAhead]

Arcticfire, remember that the hurricane doesn't grow in the ocean, it grows in the atmosphere. So the size of the ocean doesn't really matter. What does matter is the amount of space that the atmosphere will allow for the storm. Shear and dry air will stop the convection from expanding too far from the center. Also, a hurricane really is just another area of low pressure...there are many others that also compete for that space. Add areas of high pressure, and there aren't "tons of space" horizontally.