Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Heh, tricky hookrider, F6 the tornado chaser was our weather expert. That table set, we've all heard of the doldrums

"fuagf: OK, another one for Y'all. The the storms that start off the coast
of Africa, does the winds change direction when the cross the equator."

The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ /?t?/ ITCH),[1] known by sailors as the doldrums[2] or the calms because of its monotonous windless weather, is the area where the northeast and the southeast trade winds converge. It encircles Earth near the thermal equator though its specific position varies seasonally. When it lies near the geographic Equator, it is called the near-equatorial trough. Where the ITCZ is drawn into and merges with a monsoonial circulation, it is sometimes referred to as a monsoon trough, a usage that is more common in Australia and parts of Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zone

I would have guessed storms would have trouble crossing the equator, if they could at all. Though a little inconsistent these Sydney Morning Herald readers explain it better than i would could have before reading them. I'll out two

Hurricanes and cyclones are low pressure systems. When they form you'd expect the surrounding higher pressure air to flow in radially. But minute forces, caused by the earth's rotation, make the wind flowing towards the low pressure rotate - anticlockwise northern hemisphere, clockwise southern. They're called Coriolis forces. Now imagine a low pressure forming in the southern hemisphere. The first tiny breezes trying to fill the low pressure are made to rotate in a clockwise direction. The low pressure deepens and what was a breeze is now a cyclone. If the cyclone now moves north across the equator the Coriolis forces - now anticlockwise - will try to reverse the rotation, but they're far too small to have any effect. The cyclone will continue to rotate in a clockwise direction.
Jon Sarvis, Maianbar

The correct names for the topical storms in either hemispheres is Tropical Revolving Storms (TRS). Other names are usually local to an area eg. Hurricane, Spanish, hurakan, god of the storm, or typhoon from the Chinese dialect, tai fung or big wind. The earth's rotation, the geostrophic effect, determines the direction of rotation of the TRS and in the northern hemisphere it is anti-clock wise or left handed and in the southern hemisphere it is clock wise or right handed. The storms originate generally between 7 and 15 degrees latitude, south or north. They travel initially in a direction of between west to south-west in the southern hemisphere and west and north-west in the northern hemisphere. They generally recurve (change course about 90 degrees to their original course line) at 25 degrees latitude, may be lower in southern hemisphere, and take a direction of north-east in the northern hemisphere or south-east in the southern hemisphere. The formation of a TRS occurs over the ocean as a result of the differential heating between the air and the sea, this causes spiralling thermal currents which gather intensity resulting in a low pressure system. They always travel away from the equator and therefore never cross it. (see http://www.bom.gov.au/ for further info).
Mick Costelloe, South Coogee
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/if-a-hurricane-rotates-in-one-direction-and-a-cyclone-rotates-in-the-other-what-happens-if-they-cross-the-equator-20050917-gdm2oo.html

See also:

Fact or Fiction?: South of the Equator Toilets Flush and Tornadoes Spin in the Opposite Direction
[...]
The Coriolis force isn't, however, omnipotent, compelling all currents great and small to spin counterclockwise when north of the equator and clockwise to its south. Though many people have seen videos of toilets flushing in Australia and the U.S. that swirl in opposite directions, these experiments are based on luck and, perhaps not surprisingly, the toilets' varying designs. Pranksters have even gone so far as to blame the Coriolis effect for hair curling in a certain direction.

Despite the large amount of misinformation, toilets—and even tornadoes—are too small to be affected by the Coriolis, whose force would only begin to directly influence a storm's swirling mass if it were approximately three times larger than the supercell storm systems that typically generate tornadoes.

"Tornadoes are only indirectly influenced by the Coriolis force," says meteorologist Harold Brooks of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla. The majority of tornadoes happen in "tornado alley," in the Great Plains of the U.S., but they can happen anywhere in the world, including southern Brazil, northeastern Argentina and Bangladesh. These violently roiling columns of air originate from parent thunderstorms called supercells. In the U.S., supercells form when dry polar air from Canada meets moist tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico, causing the warm air to rapidly rise.
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