How does a warm front affect a hurricane?

Question

I need this for school! Please help!!

Answer 1

Excellent question. It's not a warm front per se. What frequently happens when a hurricane approaches the continental US is that it draws itself into an existing front (generally a weak cold front being the summer or fall season). The result will be an intense low pressure wave - the tropical cyclone has now become an extra tropical cyclone - on the front which then moves northward or northeastward along the front and associated with a huge precipitation pattern. This is when flash floods occur a considerable distance inland. In 1971 while I was in Guam studying typhoon data by satellite and preparing for my PhD a storm, I forgot the name now, came into the Florida panhandle, joined itself to a frontal surface and moved north into Pennsylvania. There it caused great flooding including a warehouse where many of my household goods were being stored while I was overseas. So I am intimately familiar with the problems associated with this kind of weather event.

Answer 2

The effect it will usually have is determining where it will go once it is closer to land or after landfall.

Out in the ocean, if a hurricane is well organized, there isn't much that will effect a hurricane as it feeds off the warm waters in the tropical band. Once it nears the coast, if there is a trough, or a front, it may be substantial enough to 'turn' the storm North.

Take a look at weather.com, or nhc.noaa.gov (this is the national hurricane center at noaa), these are both great resources for your school work. Good luck!

Answer 3

Warm fronts as recognised by meteorologists do not affect hurricanes. Warm fronts occur in high latitudes in the westerlies while hurricanes form in the tropics in the easterlies. They do not occur in the same latitudes so do not affect each other. Cold fronts extend closer to the equator than warm fronts so there can be interaction as has already been discussed but warm fronts are out of the picture.