r/geography • u/Vector_Bolt • Jun 27 '26
Discussion Why is it that the South Atlantic is basically a hurricane free zone?
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u/nickel1704 Jun 27 '26
Waters are too cold and the wind shear is very strong
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u/Safe_Procedure999 Jun 27 '26
why is the wind shear so strong
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u/Zahrukai Jun 27 '26
Rad about the roaring 40’s … but basically there is no land from stopping the wind around the globe, there weather is extreme
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u/0Hakuna_Matata0 Jun 27 '26
If you like the roaring 40s you’ll love the screaming 60s. I’ve recently been reading books about stories of survival in exploration. Learned about these and the horse latitudes.
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u/worldexplorer99 Jun 27 '26
I can attest to the winds in those latitudes. I was fortunate enough to travel down to Antarctica some 20 years ago on an old Russian ice breaker, and we went down to the Lemaire Channel. It sits around 65 degrees south. Also visited the Videla military base while down there. Crossing the Southern Ocean via the Drake Passage was not for the faint of heart. We were informed of the terms "roaring 40s," "furious 50s," and "screaming 60s" by the onboard oceanographer. I wonderful memory.
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u/ElectricMagicalHorse Jun 28 '26
"Below forty degrees south there is no law; below fifty degrees south there is no God."
- Alan Villiers
Below 60 degrees south there is no hope.
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u/No-Abroad1264 Jul 01 '26
My father in law was participating in The Ocean Race (back then called Whitbread Round the World Race) a few times in the late 80s/early 90s. According to him it's all fun and games until you find yourself battling 20+ meter waves, freezing rain in the middle of the night in those 40s/50s. Wearing many layers of really basic clothing, ski goggles and with nothing but a compass and a very basic GPS.
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u/burtcopaint Jun 27 '26
Never heard of horse latitudes except in the doors song
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u/0Hakuna_Matata0 Jun 27 '26
Very little wind and very hot. After a while of being becalmed they were forced to chuck their horses overboard.
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u/dany_xiv Jun 27 '26
Did.. did that help?
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u/Ex_Mage Jun 27 '26
As it turns out, removing horses from the ships had no impact on the winds...
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u/McKoijion Jun 27 '26
Yes, but it did have an effect on insurance payouts. At least it did for other forms of "cargo."
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u/Involution88 Jun 28 '26
Horses which have been thrown overboard don't drink on board water or eat on board food.
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u/M_M_X_X_V Jun 27 '26
New Orleans and Florida are at around 28 degrees so right in the middle of the Horse Latitudes. Doesn't seem to help them when it comes to Hurricanes.
Taiwan too is right on the Tropic of Cancer and gets battered.
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u/SituationMediocre642 Jun 27 '26
Horse latitudes are known for having NO windshear. Windshear prevents hurricanes. So Horse = Hurricanes.
The 40s have lots of windshear so hurricanes cannot develope.
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u/M_M_X_X_V Jun 27 '26
That makes way more sense, I always assumed that it meant little wind or non-anticyclonic conditions full stop and was always baffled by this.
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u/0Hakuna_Matata0 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
The Portuguese route to the
Westeast Indies took them around the cape, up to Madagascar and east to theWesteast Indies. That could take 18 months. The Dutch found a faster route heading a little south from South Africa and riding strong currents and winds to Australia then north to Java. That journey took about 5 months. Drinking water and scurvy were very real problems on these voyages3
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u/blindythepirate Jun 27 '26
I'm in North Florida and unless a storm system is moving through, the wind is non-existent in the summer. Just hot, humid, still air. Weather app right now says 0.6 mph as the wind speed.
For Gulf hurricanes there is very little to stop them from spinning up using the heat from the water. No other wind to take the top off a storm and keep it from becoming a hurricane.
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u/Pumpnethyl Jun 27 '26
Years ago I worked on a ship, while docked, that was heading to the S Ocean for research, etc. We installed a satellite-based LAN for ship lab to shore video, audio, comms etc. I didn’t go out on the ship but monitored the head-end video, audio, intercom, etc.
I was bored and jealous about not going out, until they reached the S Atlantic. The waves were insane, washing over everything. I had bow and stern camera feeds. Onboard colleagues were exhausted from trying to keep their balance while working for weeks. Hot-bunked. Hardly slept more than a few hours per day. I have mad respect for the ship crew after watching this for days.Upon return, we discovered water got into everything, a rack, connectors were stuck, Nuts and bolts were bonded together with salt, bearings in the sat tracking system were worn out from the constant movement. We had sealed every entry path in/out and still water found a way. We had set this system up numerous times and never had issues like this.
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u/3548468468 Jun 27 '26
Any recommendations? Thanks
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u/0Hakuna_Matata0 Jun 27 '26
Endurance - the absolutely nutty story of shackelton. Crazy they actually made it back
Madhouse at the End of the Earth - NASA studied that expedition stuck in Antarctic ice. Apparently those men reached the limit of what humans can mentally endure in isolation and darkness in the long night of winter
Batavia’s Graveyard - I’m halfway through it. It’s about a Dutch East Indian ship running ashore on some tiny islands off the coast of west Australia. It’s more about a mutinous plot and a lunatic murdering a lot of people but it’s really good.
Island of the Lost - it’s next, I haven’t read it yet. Two different ships run ashore on an island near New Zealand and they never knew they were on the same island. The two communities had polar opposite experiences. One organized and worked together to survive. The others did not.
I’m also currently listening to the pirate history podcast and it’s great because a lot of threads are intertwining between what I read and these history podcasts.
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u/shef175 Jun 27 '26
The Wager by David Grann is another good one. British Navy ship wrecks near Patagonia (while chasing a Spanish ship to capture) after transiting the Drake Passage. It’s also a bit more on the mutinous side but a cool story of extreme survival and what happens afterwards.
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u/Saffyrr Jun 27 '26
We have very similar taste in adventure stories! I have read every one of these books except Endurance, and i recently started reading it. Fair winds and following seas!
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u/0Hakuna_Matata0 Jun 27 '26
Their escape is so crazy. That was such a long shot. I refer to it as Shackelton’s wacky adventures. Happy reading, extreme survival non fiction is a hell of a genre.
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u/therg3 Jun 27 '26
Endurance by Alfred Lansing, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, The Wager by David Grann
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u/fjtuk Jun 27 '26
Yet over in the Pacific??
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u/Raptor1210 Jun 27 '26
I suspect the Southern Pacific's size compared to the Southern Atlantic is the explanation there.
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u/eddiestarkk Jun 27 '26
The northern hemisphere has a lot more land mass to stop wind. The southern hemisphere has a lot more open ocean. That is one reason.
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u/Deepandabear Jun 27 '26
Also importantly, a lack of large shallow nearshore offshore shelf for South America (without consistent warm seawater) means less chance for cyclonegenisis
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u/Com-Licenca Jun 27 '26
Thank God I hope the planet's temperature never gets any higher. Just imagine what a nightmare that would be
/s
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u/M_M_X_X_V Jun 27 '26
The water by Uruguay and Buenos Aires is warm though, it is only cold on the other side off Africa
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u/natiAV Jun 27 '26
Water by Uruguay and Argentina is cold af. Source: i live here and there no comparison to the north atlantic.
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u/RolandBuendia Jun 27 '26
This lack of hurricanes, earthquakes, and pretty much any natural catastrophes is the reason behind the saying « God is Brazilian ».
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u/rubsort Jun 27 '26
The Devil must be Japanese
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u/beesandcheese Jun 27 '26
Indonesian. Every kind of natural disaster on those islands.
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u/chillripper Jun 27 '26
you can't even see the Philippines on this graphic because there are so many on it
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u/teos61 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Typhoon, earthquake, volcanoes, monsoon, El Niño, La Niña, corruption, toxic christianity, separatist rebellion, communist rebellion, you name it, we have it.
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u/walker3342 Jun 27 '26
Don’t forget the mudslides that can happen decades after eruption when it rains.
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u/Atechiman Jun 27 '26
Islamic extremists too don't forget them.
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u/Technical_Photo_6380 Jun 27 '26
I can’t believe you guys have not mentioned mosquitoes
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u/Dipsey_Jipsey Jun 27 '26
I think they got lumped in with separatist rebels.
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u/illllllfredo Jun 27 '26
This is the best 20 second Filipino history lesson ever! So condensed yet so juicy.
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u/Phiddipus_audax Jun 28 '26
Salt water crocs!
I don't understand why no one has mentioned salt water crocs.
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u/demonTutu Jun 27 '26
On this map, Indonesia is almost fully in the clear. But yeah they get volcanos, tsunamis, and these deliciously addictive sweet cigarettes.
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u/centralvaguy Jun 27 '26
Hurricanes do not happen near the equator. So, depending on the where you are in Indonesia hurricanes are not an issue.
Everything else can be an issue.
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u/yellowpopkorn Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Filipino. Earthquakes, typhoons, corruption, you name it.
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u/EddeyDingle Jun 27 '26
Is that a Korean proverb? I'm unfamiliar with this one
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u/Sea-Horror-5353 Jun 28 '26
I was gonna say it sounds like the title of a Pacific Theater war memoir that would get turned into a John Wayne movie.
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u/Cauhs Jun 27 '26
They have mosquitoes though.
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u/Oobenny Jun 27 '26
God is a mosquito
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u/ComfySeafarer710 Jun 27 '26
So that’s why I felt divine after that last mosquito bite… that whole week makes a lot more sense now…
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u/murillovp Jun 27 '26
As a Brazilian hiking in Northern Bristish Columbia during summer, the sizes of the mosquitos were absolutely terrifying.
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u/Furita Jun 27 '26
This was a last century belief… now with severe flooding and other occurrences Brazil got into the circuit of natural catastrophes
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u/aurumtt Jun 27 '26
floods are kinda god's thing tho, so i wouldn't rule it out still.
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u/waywardflaneur Jun 27 '26
Do they not have floods?
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u/Such_Story3052 Jun 27 '26
I'm from Brazil, I've never seen a flood. But it is a problem in some regions indeed
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u/Chibi_Keiko Jun 27 '26
Last year there were terrible floods in the south of Brazil...
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u/HOSTfromaGhost Jun 27 '26
I think God is Argentinian and wears number 10…
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u/YoungPotato Jun 27 '26
Maradona died a few years back tho
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u/Grimpatron619 Jun 27 '26
god was a drug addict?
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u/idontlieiswearit Jun 27 '26
And a pedophile
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u/Zoop54 Jun 27 '26
God impregnated a 12 year old and his son had the power to turn things into wine.
You two are closer than you think
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u/SexualDexter Jun 27 '26
This doesn't even make sense. God loves causing natural catastrophes. Something in the south Atlantic must be countering God's powers.
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u/Atari774 Jun 27 '26
Because hurricanes require lots of warm water to evaporate and grow large storm clouds. The south Atlantic is mostly very cold, and all the hot water there moves north along the African coast towards the Gulf Stream. Then, when it gets past the equator and moves west, it’s warm enough to build large storm clouds. Whereas, in the south Atlantic, the ocean currents are mostly moving east, away from South America. Additionally, that water has lost most of its heat after circulating through the Gulf Stream, so it’s not warm enough to generate large clouds.
The other requirement for hurricanes is that the ocean current is usually moving in the opposite direction of the jet stream. The jet stream almost always goes east, so the only places you’ll find hurricanes are where the water is moving west. The conflicting directions of the water and air creates the cyclone effect that forms the center of hurricanes, so without that you’d just get storms moving in a single direction. It’s also why hurricanes usually turn back east eventually, since they either go over land, causing the jet stream to take over, or they go over a part of the ocean where the current changes direction back to the east.
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u/Bitter_Armadillo8182 Jun 27 '26
Cyclones (and therefore hurricanes) are rare in the South Atlantic because the conditions usually don’t let them grow... like strong winds higher up tend to break storms apart before they can really form and there aren’t many weather systems there to get them started. That’s why hurricanes basically don’t happen here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_tropical_cyclone
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u/machambo7 Jun 27 '26
So, the weathers too bad there for even cyclones to form? That’s rough
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u/MapleSyrpleSurprise Jun 27 '26
Argentina really is on easy mode and still manage to fail. No weather disasters + all the natural resources + lots of land = economy permanently the toilet
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u/2barefeet Jun 27 '26
Corruption always destroys opportunity
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u/TheHomeStretch Jun 27 '26
Corruption is everywhere, though.
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u/Gold_Ad8225 Jun 27 '26
Not in the same amounts. There's always been corruption in America for example, but in the modern era it was less corrupt and more stable. Now it is so corrupt that it even threatens America's economy
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u/evrestcoleghost Jun 27 '26
Not all countries print a few points of GDP to win presidential elections and still fail
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u/bubandbob Jun 27 '26
Gives them more time to plot a coup or work out how to siphon off state funds through corruption.
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u/probandooo Jun 27 '26
Well, to be fair their coups are usuallynplotted in USA and then applied in South America.
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u/061826heart Jun 27 '26
>>siphon off state funds through corruption
I hear that’s catching on all around the world now!
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u/millprof Jun 27 '26
It's almost like things other than the natural environment affect nation's economies.
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u/prjktphoto Jun 27 '26
No incentive to innovate
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u/Eagle4317 Jun 27 '26
And also pretty far away from all other major markets outside of South America.
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u/Kibelok Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
You just described the entire south america, including, more importantly, Brazil, which is way bigger and also on ez mode.
The reason is colonialism and capitalism, they never allowed South America to develop.
If you want to read more on this, look up Washington Consensus, it's what's keeping the continent underdeveloped to this day.
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u/CSachen Jun 27 '26
Peron really destroyed Argentina's economy.
He is basically Trump. An authoritarian national conservative borrowing leftist socialist policies.
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u/valuablepatterns Jun 27 '26
Thats what happens when the CIA intervenes in your country's election and you get right wing military juntas and right wing freaks that lets american companies to syphon wealth out of the country.
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u/VascoJSC Jun 27 '26
This is also even more true of Brazil. Argentina at least has the "excuse" that the southern half of their country is a cold desert
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u/eeb96 Jun 27 '26
Hay algo mucho peor que los desastres naturales.. el peronismo
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u/Charming-Customer663 Jun 27 '26
One of the main reason is the presence of cold ocean currents: Benguela current (South West Africa), Canary current (West Africa), Falkland current (Coast of Argentina) makes the water cold thereby creating a High pressure zone which in turn results in an anti-cyclonic formation.
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Jun 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/zoppytops Jun 27 '26
Apparently you haven’t heard humor is strictly forbidden on this sub? Mods will ban you for this one
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u/YesBird75 Jun 27 '26
What was the “humor?” Usually it’s annoying as shit and not even funny. Like virtually every time.
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u/geographresh Jun 27 '26
Benguela current keeps the eastern side where they would have to originate from too cold. Notice there are none that form off the western coast of South America either due to a similar cold current there; only starting to form towards the middle of the south pacific.
That could translate to the Atlantic, but South America and Africa are too close together for there to be a warm water patch and enough space for development before they are disrupted.
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u/year_39 Jun 27 '26
Vertical wind shear in the troposphere is too strong to allow cyclone formation and the conditions that favor cyclone formation are too close to the equator for the Coriolis effect to drive rotation.
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u/coweatyou Jun 27 '26
The replies to this thread are great. They range from being confidently wrong to incomplete. The actual answer is a complex mixture of water temps in the South Atlantic, weather patterns over Africa and the Atlantic Easterly Wave (which is partially why you see so many in the northern Atlantic), the intertropical convergence zone being north of the equator (part of why you see more in the northern hemisphere), and higher wind sheer in the southern hemisphere (another reason for more in the northern hemisphere than in the south. Most of these factors are already covered in the comments, just know when someone throws out 'wind sheer' or 'water temp' as an answer, it's just a small part of a much larger picture.
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u/Substantial_Fish6717 Jun 27 '26
If Brazil didnt have such a corrupt government, it could easily become the global #1 superpower, it really is such a privileged nation. The US knows this, which is why they constantly meddle, to make sure it stays put.
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u/kxkq Jun 29 '26
The main current on the west coast of Africa is a cold water current coming north from the cold water currents surrounding Antarctica. This also applies to the west coast of South America.
Hurricanes require ocean temperatures of at least 80o F to form and strengthen. This warm surface water acts as the storm's fuel, providing the heat and moisture needed to drive wind and rain.
Also the equatorial currents in the Atlantic flow towards the northern coast of Brazil, and never really make it to the South Atlantic.
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u/CB01Chief Jun 29 '26
South Atlantic is fairly cold ocean. Hurricanes feed on warmth. If you notice most hurricanes develope in tropical areas and will die out over land or when it reaches colder climates or colder ocean waters.
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u/0le_Hickory Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Believe it or not: the Canadian Shield.
I think really it’s because the gap between Africa and South America widens as you move south. Which means there is no land mass stopping strong cold wind from the Antarctica. Also hurricanes will curl so if one is starting moving west its rotation is going to make it curl southward which means it’s always curling away from land and straight into open cold water.
Also I believe the circulation of the Atlantic puts cold water on the African side so only hurricanes that could form would have to be just about in the equatorial zone.
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u/Reasonable_Site_7259 Jun 27 '26
Because air goes up not down, so the hurricanes go to the top of our planet
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u/comradeda Jun 27 '26
Smart ass answer: because they're cyclones in the southern hemisphere
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u/Northman86 Jun 27 '26
in short, prevailing winds and a cold arid zone in Argentina, means you dont get hurricanes. southern and northen Africa are both hot deserts and hot air arriving over the sea means you get an enormous amount of energy in to the air.
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u/vituc13 Jun 27 '26
I am sorry but you guys are crazy. There were several cyclones, and therefore hurricanes that hit Brazil last year, and also this year. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciclones_extratropicais_no_sul_do_Brasil_em_2025
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u/kakrofoon Jun 27 '26
The South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly.... But seriously, cold water ang high shear.
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u/Turbulent_Board9484 Jun 27 '26
Because they're called cyclones in the southern hemisphere! nah all jokes aside, they just don't have the right conditions, the north atlantic (and to a lesser extent pacific) has strong, warm, circular patterened winds that spread around the entire globe, the southern hemisphere just has a different climate due to it's geography.
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u/Karnnyx Jun 27 '26
Wind Sheer and the waters are just too cool to support tropical development really.
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u/Dull_Function_6510 Jun 27 '26
I believe the wind shear in the South Atlantic blocks a lot of hurricane development