This confluence of weather factors, usually found only in computer models, created waves 10 stories high and winds of 120 miles per hour. How the perfect storm formed Hurricane Grace was bouncing north in the mid-Atlantic, near Bermuda, doomedto run out of steam and end its run as a messy tropical storm somewhere inthe far North Atlantic. But a low pressure system lurking off Nova Scotia stood ready to add its energy to Grace. This low pressure system created its own set of problems for mariners, but nothing out of the ordinary. Even combined, these two systems would have formed a nasty, but not historic, Atlantic storm.
Air flows from high to low pressure.
The bigger the pressure differential, the greater the flow. The two lows sucked in energy faster than the cold front could supply it. And local TV forecasters commented only on the unique nature of the low pressure area that was sliding backward toward Boston. Nobody knew, or predicted, how terrible it was at sea. Andrea Gail captain Billy Tyne would have received weather faxes on board the boat as he headed home to Gloucester.