Looking at Hurricane John last week, a thought struck me - no Eastern Pacific hurricanes ever hit California, and very few ever hit Mexico. I understand that the prevailing winds in the hurricane formation zone in the Eastern Pacific are from the east, but Atlantic hurricanes recurve all the time. Why don’t Eastern Pacific ones?
Sua
The pacific is too cold to provide energy. Ever stepped into the ocean in CA? It’s freezing. It literally sucks energy away from any storms. Just go to any beach in CA, and watch the brave few who enter the water. women come out with hard nipples.
It may be that the Pacific off the Califoirnia coast is too cold. However, the Pacific off the Queensland coast is warm enough to support cyclones (which are hurricanes under a different name). The difference may be caused by a different in the prevailing ocean currents, which are (in part) caused the coriolis effect genberated by the Earth’s rotation, so that water comes from the north in both situations – but north of California is a colder region, and north of Queensland is a warmer region. But I’m not a meteorologist.
The OP asked about hurricanes off CA, not AU. I think the warm waters off Queensland are far enough (half a world, even) away to not really have a hurrican impact on CA. Thank god.
But tropical cyclones (which formed over warmer waters) hit Long Island and New England often enough, where the water is pretty damn cold, too. The colder waters of the North Atlantic certainly weaken storms aiming for those coasts, and sometimes dissipate them, but those areas do get hit.
My real question is about storm tracks.
Sua
Or is there so much cold water between the tropical cyclone formation zones in the East Pacific and California that no storm can survive the trek?
Sua
The questions that I would ask are:
(1) Does it depend on the prevailing winds? That is, do hurricanes form in the NE Pacific, but get carried away from California?
(2) Must hurricane/cyclone formation take place over a relatively shallow and warm ocean area, such as the Gulf of Mexico or the Coral Sea? If that’s so, then there isn’t a suitable area near California.
From Indiana.edu
But there have been cyclones , which were the remnants of hurricanes or tropical storms.
If you look up the hurricane patterns for the east and west coast, there ARE hurricanes and tropical storms on the pacific side of the US. However, they usually aren’t very powerfull, and even the ones that are tend to curve out toward open water rather than in toward land. Here’s a website that explains a little more:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/whpacg.htm
One interesting tidbit - the A-Z names we’re familiar with for hurricane names are reserved for Atlantic side storms - there’s a completely different list for the Pacific side…
Water in NY is much warmer than in places like San Francisco and Monterrey, due to the Gulf Stream
Thus, storms can gather energy from the water.
Well, this is not entirely true. Off the east coast --from FLA to NY or farther – is the Gulf Stream, which are warm waters funneled up from the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf Stream happens to allow storms to ride straight up the coast, like a railroad for tropical systems. Happens alot.
Because it is narrow and carries storms into West-to-East prevaling winds, especially the Jet Stream, it can’t gaurantee the delivery of a major hurricane to New Jersey or New York, but it allows a condition for which it can happen.
How much do the Sierra moutains provide an atmospheric barrier to cyclonic wind action?
Besides, we West Coasters get earthquakes and volcanoes and forest fires. It just wouldn’t be equitable if we got hurricanes, too!
Earthquakes are over in 30 seconds, and you don’t have to evacuate before hand. At least if one destroys your house, you know where to find the pieces.
Southern California has been volcano free for the last 10 million years or so. I don’t see this as a problem.
Forrest fires only are a problem near forrests.
Yup, I like the hurricane free part of So Cal.
Southern Cal: No blizzards, nor N’or Easters, nor hurricanes, nor even much lightning and thunderstroms, if any.
Over here in the East, Earthquakes wouldn’t even rank among things to worry about.
San Diego has had tropical storms come ashore in the past. Here’s a link to a National Weather Service discussion of past September weather trends and highlights for the area that mentions tropical storm Kathleen, which came ashore in 1976, and tropical storm Doreen, which came ashore in 1977.
I have memories from 1976 of driving through tropical storm Kathleen to get to a one-day class at UCSD that I apparently had to be at no matter how bad the weather was!
Funny story from my dad: His aunts moved away from Washington to get away from the earthquakes. To do this, they moved to Florida. I guess they thought hurricanes were safer 
Right now, as happens almost every late summer, the whole Wenatchee (WA) Valley is filled with smoke from a forest fire many miles away. Makes bicycling unpleasant, let me tell you!
I lived less than 100 miles from Mount St. Helens when she blew in 1980 (the day after my 14th birthday). Frickin’ ash everywhere!
An honest-to-goodness tornado touched down in downtown Vancouver, WA when I was a little boy in the early '70s. That was truly bizarre.
Oh, cite on that tornado:
The Sierra are on the eastern border of California. Any tropical storms to hit California would be coming out of the west, from the ocean.
So the presence of the Sierra Nevada range is pretty irrelevant.