Hurricanes

[commoner]

...The general movement of winds and weather patterns is from West to East, no doubt because of the earth's rotation....yet I have noticed that these awful destructive hurricanes in the Carribean always appear to move East to West before making landfall in the US.....Wonder why that is...?

[brachiopod]

It's more of a clockwise path they follow. So landfall on the South Eastern United States is the '6 to 9 o'clock' section.

[Clanad]

Actually, the average tropical cyclone moves from east to west in the tropical trade winds that blow near the equator. As it approaches the North American Continent, it comes under the steering winds produced by the Bermuda High... a rather fixed high pressure area that causes the approaching tropical storm to steer south.  The Bermuda High is the primary reason that some tropical storms that become hurricanes move northward up the eastern seaboard once the storm is east-southeast of Bermuda... By the way, hurricanes and typhoons are the same basic weather phenomena, except that typhoons are in the Pacific and Indian Oceans...

[commoner]

..Hi guys....you seem to know all about this stuff, very impressed with your answer Clanad ....thanks too brachiopod...thanks again...commoner