John Dean, age 11, of Deroche, B. C.for his question:

A storm in Alaska may start a series of weather events which results in cold spells in sunny Florida. A hurricane hatching off the West Indies may rip a path of destruction through New England. For the weather is a global affair and events that happen overhead may have been started thousands of miles away.

Several factors are necessary to start a hurricane and even the meteorologists are not altogether sure of what gives this storm such fury. However, the atmosphere which produces the weather must obey certain laws and we can use this information to figure out why and where a hurricane is likely to hatch, plus some of the reasons for its path of destruction.

Hurricanes hatch over tropical seas near, but not at, the equator. A mass of calm air sits on the warm water, gathering huge quotas of heat energy and moisture. This warm, moist air tends to expand and rise, creating a pocket of thin, light air called a low pressure cell. At this point in its career, the hurricane is a harmless baby.

Heavier surrounding air tends to blow into a low pressure area, much as water flows downhill. The young hurricane winds are twisted in a spiral direction by the spinning of the earth and curve inward to the central low pressure area where the air is whisked aloft in an updraft. This produces a fairly fierce storm, but some experts suspect that a hurricane may get an extra push from wandering trade winds.

Hurricane hatching grounds are in the tropics where trade winds blow towards the equator from the northeast and the southeast. Normally, the two trade wind belts are separated by a region of calm near the equator.

But at certain seasons, the northeast or the southeast winds may cross over the calm no man’s land and tangle with each other in a breezy pinwheel.

The hurricanes start near the West Indies during the season when the southeast trade winds tend to spurt across the equator and tangle with the northeast trade winds in the northern hemisphere. This weathery whirl of winds may be present, adding extra fury when a hurricane is in the making.

The fully formed hurricane is shaped like a doughnut, may e 400 miles wide. It now moves from its nest, carried by the prevailing winds at perhaps ten miles an hour. It furious energy is spent in a path of destruction and gradually the wild winds die down to whispering breezes.