Why no hurricane has ever crossed the equator
It quite literally cannot
We all remember the Simpsons' trip to Australia when their toilet was programmed to swirl the American way.
It turns out that the direction a toilet flushes is not determined by the hemisphere it’s in but rather by the shape of the toilet basin and the flow of water.
This myth is often associated with the Coriolis effect.
The Coriolis effect does not influence small-scale movements; instead, it has a significant impact on global weather patterns and ocean currents, particularly hurricanes.
SEE ALSO: Why you'll never hear of a hurricane with these names
It’s stronger at the poles and weaker at the equator.
“No hurricane has ever crossed the equator, and that is because it quite literally cannot,” says meteorologist and hurricane chaser Mark Robinson.
The effect causes hurricanes to rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, influencing their path and development by steering them along curved trajectories rather than straight lines.
“Getting that to cross the equator, where the Coriolis force is essentially zero, is kind of impossible because it means you would have to have that entire air mass spinning in one direction across the equator and then spinning in the other direction, which simply does not happen,” explains Robinson.
And now you know why!
Coriolis effect as described by NOAA: The rotation of the Earth on its axis deflects the atmosphere toward the right in the Northern Hemisphere and toward the left in the Southern Hemisphere, resulting in curved paths. The deflection of the atmosphere sets up the complex global wind patterns which drive surface ocean currents. This deflection is called the Coriolis effect. It is named after the French mathematician Gaspard Gustave de Coriolis (1792-1843), who studied the transfer of energy in rotating systems like waterwheels. (Ross, 1995).
(Header image courtesy of NOAA)