page_title: Hurricane Alley
section_title: How hurricanes form
hierarchical_section_title: Hurricane Alley / How hurricanes form
caption_attribution_description: English: Hurricane Alley from NASA's website Deutsch: Bereich des wärmeren Wassers in der Hurricane Alley
context_page_description: Hurricane Alley is an area of warm water in the Atlantic Ocean stretching from the west coast of northern Africa to the east coast of Central America and Gulf Coast of the Southern United States. Many hurricanes form within this area. The sea surface temperature of the Atlantic in Hurricane Alley has grown slightly warmer over the past decades. A particularly warm summer in 2005 led climate scientists to begin studying whether this trend would lead to an increase in hurricane activity.
context_section_description: Hurricanes form over tropical waters in areas of high humidity, light winds, and warm sea surface temperatures. These areas which were described above are usually between the latitudes of 8° and 20° north. The perfect temperature for a hurricane is approximately 26 °C. This temperature has been set as a standard. If the water is colder the hurricane will most likely weaken, but if the waters are warmer rapid growth can occur.
  The area between 10° and 20°N create the most hurricanes in a given season because of the warmer temperatures. Hurricanes do not form outside this range because the Coriolis effect is not strong enough to create the tight circulation needed and above this range the temperatures are too cool. The waters are only at the necessary temperatures from July until mid-October. In the Atlantic this is the height of the season. 
  Since hurricanes rely on sea surface temperature, sometimes an initially active season becomes quiet later. This is because the hurricanes are so strong that they churn the waters and bring colder waters up from the deep. This creates an area of the sea the size of the hurricane, which has cooler waters, which can be 5-10 °C lower than before the hurricane. When a new hurricane moves over the cooler waters they have no fuel to continue to thrive, so they weaken or even die out.
caption: The warm waters of Hurricane Alley are depicted in orange.
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