# Hurricane paths **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 27, 2003, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-paths/204155 "2003-09-27T13:54:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![disponibilite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@disponibilite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/disponibilite)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2003, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-paths/204155/1 "2003-09-27T13:54:11Z")
It has always puzzled me that the worst case scenario for hurricane travel as regards Florida has never happened. That is to say ------ ------a category 5 hurricane landing at approximately between Daytona to Cocoa Beaches, traveling directly westward across the center of the state, causing tremendous damage to Orlando, Tampa and St Petersburg, ------going into the gulf of Mexico only slightly diminished (Florida isn’t very wide) and restrengthening back into a category 4 or 5 hurricane to cause even further havoc. I look at old hurricane trackings and they NEVER do that. Always either curve northward to the Carolinas or go by Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico that way. Is there a reason for that? Does the Gulf Stream have some kind of effect on hurricane paths? Does something else affect this? It just seems very strange that one of the most obvious paths for a hurricane to travel------directly westward across central Florida ----never seems to happen. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2003, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-paths/204155/2 "2003-09-27T14:03:44Z")
Welcome to the SDMB, **disponibilite**. I’m not a meteorologist, but I do have a book… This isn’t going to answer your specific question, but might give us a theory. From _Typhoon!_, published by the Royal Observatory Hong Kong: > [@](#): > > Left on its own, a tropical cyclone in the Northern Hemisphere has an intertial tendency to drift towards the northwest. Nevertheless, its motion is more ofthen dominated by external forces. The basic concept here is that the environmental current steers the tropical cyclone. An analogy is the movement of a water eddy circulating but moving bodily within the main flow of a stream or river. It goes on to say that in the case of the Pacific northwest, “prevailing storm tracks reflect the important steering role played by the ridge of high pressure in the Pacific” - this leads to only four ‘typical’ storm tracks for that area. My guess is that there’s a similar high pressure ridge near Florida that steers the hurricanes away from the landmass. Maybe someone who actually studies the weather can confirm/debunk this? ---
**Author:** ![Scruloose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@Scruloose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scruloose)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2003, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-paths/204155/3 "2003-09-27T14:04:33Z")
No answer to your question, but hurricane Andrew went straight west across Florida, causing much damage. It didn’t turn North until it was in the gulf, then it hit N’awlins. ---
**Author:** ![Scruloose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@Scruloose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scruloose)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2003, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-paths/204155/4 "2003-09-27T14:17:49Z")
Here’s an [image](http://image.weather.com/web/newscenter/specialreports/hurricanes/awesome/andrew/andrwinfrared.jpg) showing the path of Andrew. It did hit a very narrow part of Florida, and keep going. However, I’d suspect that if it made landfall in the Daytona region, it had the potential to just keep on going into the gulf, and re-organizing once there. ---
**Author:** ![disponibilite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@disponibilite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/disponibilite)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2003, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-paths/204155/5 "2003-09-27T14:22:07Z")
Hurricane Andrew just nicked the very southern edge of Florida—Amazing the destuction it caused even doing that. Had it traveled just slightly more southerly, it would have been your usual hurricane causing very little damage to the US. The destruction a hurricane 5 would do going directly across the center of the state is almost unimaginable. And since Florida is so narrow, it would seem that could come out into the Gulf just a little weakened. I do have a personal interest in this, since I live in the Tampa Bay area and have always worried about very powerful hurricanes in the Atlantic going across the center of the state. Again, looking at old hurricane tracking maps, it seems like that never happens. Maybe there are meteorological reasons why it never would happen that way. Somebody tell me this and explain why and I will be a very happy dude and stop worrying about it.