Every year, between June and November, they strike the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the East Coast of the United States, sometimes leaving great devastation in their wake.
In the Pacific Ocean they are known as cyclones. In the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, they are known as typhoons.
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They are all tropical storms, but only in countries around the northern part of the Atlantic and northwest of the Pacific are they called hurricanes.
How do they arise, why are they so common in these parts of the world and what is their impact?
Hurricanes are energy bombs
Many hurricanes that form in the Atlantic are the result of an atmospheric phenomenon called a tropical wave.
The wave begins as a type of atmospheric current that forms a belt of low air pressure, which is especially common during July in West Africa.
If all the conditions are met, low air pressure begins to move mostly with the help of trade winds (easterly).
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When it reaches the Atlantic, a tropical wave has the potential to become a hurricane - but for that to happen it must have enough energy in the form of heat and wind.
Moreover, it needs a thick layer of warm water, with a surface water temperature above 27 degrees Celsius.
It also needs the right wind fields - horizontal wind rotation and weak or little vertical wind shear. High wind shear would cut off the heat and moisture that make hurricanes possible.
Finally, a certain concentration of rain clouds and high humidity in a given area is required.
All of this has to happen in the right place - usually between 10 and 30 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere, where the rotation of the Earth helps winds meet and rise in areas of low air pressure.
When a tropical wave encounters all these elements, they begin to interact in an area between 50 and 100 kilometers wide.
"The movement of the tropical wave is the trigger for the storm," says Jorge Zaval Hidalgo, general coordinator of Mexico's National Meteorological Service.
And the storm is the catalyst - then the dance of heat, air and water begins.
An area of low air pressure cools moist, warm air rising from the ocean, which fills the clouds.
Condensation of this air releases the heat, which lowers the pressure even more, drawing more moisture from the ocean and thus a storm is formed.
Winds meet and rise in areas of low air pressure, turning counterclockwise, giving the hurricane its distinctive shape.
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And while the storm is getting stronger, the so-called The "eye of the hurricane" - a central area at least 10 kilometers wide - remains relatively calm.
A thick wall of clouds and the strongest winds rises around it - the so-called "eye" wall.
Above that are the spiral curvatures of the clouds, which are called rain belts and where most of the rain is concentrated.
Wind speeds determine the moment when this phenomenon can be called a hurricane.
At the time of its formation, it is a tropical depression. As it gains strength, it becomes a tropical storm. And when the wind speed reaches more than 118 kilometers per hour, it is a hurricane.
However, hurricanes can be classified into five categories depending on sustained wind speeds. In the Atlantic, the Saffir-Simpson wind scale is used to measure its destructive power.
The winds of a single hurricane can generate about half of the world's electricity generation potential, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
However, the biggest culprits for destruction and loss of human life are not winds, but storm surges and floods caused by hurricane rain.
In the US, for example, storm surge from Atlantic tropical cyclones was responsible for nearly half of hurricane deaths between 1963 and 2012, according to the American Meteorological Society.
"The damage or danger associated with a tropical cyclone does not necessarily fit its category. For example, a top-level storm will not necessarily mean more rain," Hidalgo told BBC Mundo.
The most affected are Mexico, the USA and the Caribbean
This part of the world is most prone to hurricanes, mainly because the tropical latitudes in the Atlantic Ocean have the perfect temperature for their formation during many months of the year.
There are also movements of large air currents.
The easterly or trade winds, which circle the Earth near the equator, move from east to west and push hurricanes toward the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the southern United States. Their direction is affected by the Earth's rotation - the so-called Coriolis effect, which causes them to tilt slightly to the north.
And so, as hurricanes travel across the Atlantic, they veer slightly northward, and when they reach 30 degrees north latitude, they usually encounter the Predominant Westerlies, another global wind system—it causes hurricanes to veer eastward.
When it encounters the Bermuda-Azores anticyclone on its way, it determines whether the hurricane will head in the direction of the Gulf of Mexico or the USA.
Anticyclones are areas of high atmospheric pressure, with dry air and fewer clouds.
In the Northern Hemisphere, winds circulate in anticyclones counter-clockwise. The Bermuda Anticyclone becomes an obstacle, so that in order to continue onward, hurricanes must bypass it.
The size and position of the anticyclone can determine the direction of movement of the tropical cyclone.
If the anticyclone is weaker and moves to the east, hurricanes bypass it and head north, moving away from the Caribbean.
If, on the contrary, the anticyclone is stronger and located in the southeast, the tropical cyclone will head towards the Gulf of Mexico or Florida.
The position of the anticyclone varies with the time of year and season, and can change in just a few days.
"Because of these variations, the hurricane follows a very different path than the one it will follow just three or five days later," says Jorge Zavala Hidalgo of Mexico's National Meteorological Service.
Likewise, anticyclones and other types of air masses can change the path of hurricanes to the east - this is what happened with Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
After making landfall in Cuba, Hurricane Sandy began moving northeast, but was blocked by an anticyclone in Greenland and a cold front. That pushed Sandy back toward the US East Coast, where it ravaged New York and New Jersey.
Fewer hurricanes make landfall in the eastern Pacific than in the North Atlantic, despite it being a more active region.
Why are there fewer hurricanes in South America?
And while the North Atlantic offers ideal conditions for the formation of hurricanes, below the equator the situation is different.
"The South Atlantic is calmer because there are no tropical waves - that phenomenon is much more common in the Northern Hemisphere and there is more variation in wind speed and direction, which prevents hurricanes from forming," says Barnes.
Also, tropical cyclones do not form further than 500 kilometers from the equator, because the Coriolis effect is too weak there and does not change the direction of the winds and does not turn them into hurricanes.
But although hurricanes are not common in South America, they have formed on the southern coast of Brazil. In 2004, Tropical Cyclone Katarina caused 11 deaths and displaced more than 30.000 people.
What is the impact of climate change?
"Climate change is warming the ocean surface temperature and the thick ocean layer, which is a problem. "We have theories that warmer oceans make stronger and more violent storms," says meteorologist Gary M. Barnes.
Also, there are indications that the areas where cyclones find perfect conditions for survival are getting bigger, says Jorge Hidalgo.
"It is possible that the number of cyclones will not increase, but that the redistribution of categories will change. We could experience more hurricanes of a higher category and fewer of the lower ones."
What is the difference between weather and climate?
Both scientists agree that it is too early to measure the impact of climate change on the formation and direction of hurricanes.
"There is a possibility that storms will slowly become more violent, but we will need a lot of data to prove that global warming is causing stronger hurricanes." "Maybe we'll have more evidence in 25 years," Barnes says.
With thanks to Jose Manuel Galvez of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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