That's because when they cross the equator they become cyclones
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Im certain that’s because of tornado related physics and things. 👍
I'm guessing it's because they rotate in different direction in the northern and Southern hemisphere.
So crossing would imply switching direction, which would require to put that energy "somewhere" and it's physically not possible.
Can someone smarter than me explain why South America is seemingly immune to hurricanes?
I also want to know this.
https://www.ncesc.com/geographic-pedia/why-do-hurricanes-not-hit-south-america/
According to this, TL;DR- South America is further from the swirling warm winds of topics than it looks, and the ocean temperatures are colder compared to the hurricane prone areas too due to how the oceanic currents work.
That one little fella in South America - must have been confusing as fuck for them.
Is the only one Brazil ever recognized as a hurricane. But it's believed that they happen every once in a while, they are just not classified correctly.
Why wasn't it recognised as a cyclone? Was it spinning backwards?
Not only is NZ on this map but it's not even way off in the corner!
I’m happy for NZ but it might be a good idea to stay hidden for the time being.
We need a maps without nz Lemmy house
Front and center!
-ish!
really interesting. what's the reason why?
Stole explanation from r/ELI5:
When you stand on the north pole how fast are you moving relative to the earth’s core?
Zero, you just spin around in place once every 24 hours.
When you stand on the equator how fast are you moving?
1000mph, you have to circumnavigate the earth in a day.
This difference doesn’t matter much when you throw a baseball, but it absolutely matters when you’re a storm the size of a country. > This disparity in relative speed rotates the storm since the equatorial side is moving faster than the polar side, and it provides the swirling structure of the hurricane.
But here’s the problem - storms in the north spin counter-clockwise and storms in the south spin clockwise.
That means to cross the equator you have to stop and reverse direction. That’s not happening, and hurricanes never track near the equator because neither the storm itself nor the prevailing winds that push it around can approach this reversal boundary.
The equator itself is associated with very low wind speeds, aka the doldrums.
Ah, the calm belt.
Probably Coriolis effect? I’m not a professional meteorologist but I am an amateur meteorologist. I live in New Orleans and hurricanes follow somewhat predictable patterns. (Maybe not always where you can pinpoint exactly where they’re going but they tend to turn north in the northern hemisphere and south in the southern hemisphere.)
You can also look at some of the coastlines and see the millions of years of erosion from the same patterns once the continents moved more into what we have now.
The coriolis effect is a fictitious force, it's just an artifact of not doing measurements in an inertial reference frame.
Edit: If I were to attribute it to anything, I'd attribute it to the actual rotation of the earth.
If you've ever heard of sailors talking about 'the doldrums' the calm bit is the doldrums.
I'm going to say the Coriolis effect but... I don't know?
Interesting that the western Pacific seems to have so many more category 5 than the Atlantic, and while the South Pacific and Indian Ocean have plenty, the South Atlantic has basically none.
Hats off to the little guys here and there who came close...