Dear Tom,
Why don’t they have hurricanes in California, Oregon and Washington?
Lynne Keller
Dear Lynne,
To put it simply, the ocean water there is too cold. Tropical cyclones need 80(degrees) or higher water temperatures to form, and West Coast waters range from the very chilly 50s in the Pacific Northwest to the middle 70s in far southern California. Hurricanes do form in the eastern Pacific however, but they generally develop from Central America north to Baja California where the ocean water is warm enough to support storm formation.
On average, there are actually more named tropical cyclones in the eastern Pacific than in the Atlantic, but most of those storms tend to move west into the open Pacific before they dissipate. Occasionally, one of these hurricanes will affect the west coast of Mexico or Hawaii.
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Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.
WGN-TV meteorologists Steve Kahn, Richard Koeneman and Paul Dailey plus weather producer Bill Snyder contribute to this page.
