Weird Hurricane Jose Path Joins Long List Of Other Weird Paths

The weird track of Hurricane Ginger in 1971.

Hurricanes are rarely straight forward. They intensify or weaken unexpectedly, veer off course, and especially just do weird loops, reversals and other odd things as they make their way across warm tropical waters.

Hurricane Jose is doing some oddball loops out in the Atlantic Ocean and is expected to continue meandering unpredictably out there.

In August, Hurricane Harvey tragically stalled over Texas, unleashing those unprecedented floods there. On its way through Atlantic islands on its way to the United States, Hurricane Irma took a brief  detour southwestward for awhile.

The path of hurricanes and typhoons re controlled and guided by the flow of upper level winds. In the tropics in the northern hemisphere, the winds generally go east to west, which explains why hurricanes often approach the United States from the east.

Troughs of low pressure often pick up hurricanes, guiding them northward.

But sometimes, these upper level steering currents are weak or non-existent. Which leaves hurricanes or typhoons with no guidance, so to speak. They become lost and meander aimlessly out there in the Atlantic. Or Pacific. Wherever they happen to be

There's been some classic oddballs in the past, so Jose is not that unusual.

In 1971 Hurricane Ginger formed northeast of the Bahamas, moved northeast into the central Atlantic Ocean, then abruptly reversed course and headed toward the southwest, then performed a tight loop, then continued southwestward and ended up near where it started northeast of the Bahamas. Then Ginger moved northwestward, hit North Carolina, then went southeastward out to sea and dies.

Phew!

The paths of all the Atlantic tropical cyclones in the
super busy year of 2005 show how erratic they usually are.

Hurricane Kyle in 2002 changed directions half a dozen times in its trek across the Atlantic.

In fact, most hurricanes have an erratic path. Just check out the map in this post of the supremely busy 2005 hurricane season. The path of all 28 storms that year in the Atlantic superimposed upon one another look like a big messy bowl of spaghetti.

The bottom line: Expect the unexpected with any tropical cyclone.