Where is strongest part of hurricane

Mid-South Heroes. Friday Football Fever. Gas Prices. Bluff City Life. About Us. Meet The Team. Editorial Board. Latest Newscasts. Investigate TV. Gray DC Bureau. Breakdown: What is the strongest side of the hurricane. By Sagay Galindo. Published: Sep.

Then, just as quickly, the winds and rain begin again, but this time from the opposite direction. The wall of clouds surrounding the clear eye. Hurricane Danny left in and Hurricane Fran in show the variability in hurricane size. Track of Hurricane Gordon, The Right Side of the Storm As a general rule of thumb, the hurricane's right side relative to the direction it is travelling is the most dangerous part of the storm because of the additive effect of the hurricane wind speed and speed of the larger atmospheric flow the steering winds.

The increased winds on the right side increase the storm surge described in the Hazards section of this module. Tornadoes are also more common here. Looking at the figure above, pretend you are standing behind the hurricane with your back to the steering flow. In this case, the right side is the eastern section of the hurricane. If it were travelling east to west, the right side would be the north section. Hurricane Igor went through multiple cycles and became one of the larger Atlantic hurricanes on record, causing significant waves and rip currents along the U.

Hurricane eyes are not always circular. Oblong, elliptical eyes are sometimes observed, especially in weaker hurricanes. A strong hurricane may have a polygonal eyewall, where the eye takes the shape of a triangle, square, pentagon, or hexagon. Polygonal eyewalls are often associated with eyewall mesovortices, which are smaller-scale atmospheric swirls that can form within the eye and which can produce extremely strong winds.

Additional Links on HSS. Additional Resources. Hurricane Science. Hurricane Structure. Hurricane Genesis: Birth of a Hurricane. Hurricane Development: From Birth to Maturity. Hurricane Decay: Demise of a Hurricane. Interaction between a Hurricane and the Ocean. Interaction between a Hurricane and the Land. Vertical slice through the center of a mature hurricane.

The winds of a hurricane are very light in the center of the storm blue circle but increase rapidly to a maximum km miles from the center red ring and then fall off slowly toward the outer extent of the storm yellow ring.

Relative sizes of the largest and smallest tropical cyclones on record, shown in comparison to the size of the United States. In the lower troposphere, air spiraling inward forms the outer rainbands.

In the center is the eye, with nearly clear skies, surrounded by the violent eyewall, with the strongest winds and very heavy rain. The area contained in the square on the left is depicted to the right. The cloud-free eye and surrounding eyewall are clearly visible. Image credit: NASA. The "right side of the storm" is defined with respect to the storm's motion: if the hurricane is moving to the west, the right side would be to the north of the storm; if the hurricane is moving to the north, the right side would be to the east of the storm, etc.