ELI5: How does a hurricane both start and end?

So as mentioned, Hurricanes feed off warm, wet conditions. It needs both.

Warm surface water heats the air and causes it to rise, and the colder air to fall. This creates an area of Low Pressure. Now, gasses (which air is), move from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure.

Kinda like water. Think of unplugging a drain. The water moves to an area of low concentration (the pipe) and creates that “swirl”. That’s effectively what’s happening here. As long as that low pressure holds, you’ll get strong winds. The lower the pressure, the faster the wonders will swoop in.

This can happen on land, but if it’s over water, all the moisture in the air will cause rain clouds to form. Those swirling rain clouds form the hurricane.

How does it end? Many ways. If it’s not warm enough to maintain the Low pressure center then it just breaks apart. If there’s no more water, it can still be windy but it’ll die off pretty quickly too (the evaporating water assists in maintaining the circulation).

A hurricane can also experience strong counter winds that just kinda....blow it apart. It’s called wind sheer and is actually a pretty common way they die.

/r/explainlikeimfive Thread