just finished reading Divine Wind

Did you know that the strength of a hurricane is dependent not just on the warmth of the ocean/Gulf water but on the depth of that warm water? Therefore, if a storm tracks over a deep warm current, a pocket of particularly hot water, or shallow water, it can explode into a catastrophic storm very quickly. Especially if the storm is moving slowly.

Basically, over most of the ocean/Gulf there’s a relatively thin (up to 100 meters) layer of warm water on top of much cooler water. In shallow water this layer extends all the way down to the bottom. It’s very difficult and expensive to measure the depth of this layer on a regular enough basis to greatly improve the accuracy of storm forecasts.

There’s your meteorology lesson for the day. Hopefully hurricane season will continue to be quiet and you won’t need to know all that.

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