Storm tracks are the relatively narrow zones in the Atlantic and Pacific along which most Atlantic or Pacific extratropical cyclones travel.
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The storm tracks begin in the westernmost parts of Atlantic and Pacific, where the large temperature contrasts between land and sea cause cyclones to form, particularly in winter. Surface friction cause these cyclones to quickly fill up and decay as soon as they reach land at the eastern end of the basins, accounting for the easternmost edges of the storm tracks.
Another example of a storm track is the circumpolar storm track in the Antarctic, however land-sea contrasts play no role in its formation.
Given a grid point field of geopotential height, storm tracks can be visualized by contouring its average standard deviation, after the data has been band-pass filtered.
Famous quotes containing the words storm and/or track:
“In the very midst of the crowd about this wreck, there were men with carts busily collecting the seaweed which the storm had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of the tide, though they were often obliged to separate fragments of clothing from it, and they might at any moment have found a human body under it. Drown who might, they did not forget that this weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of society.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)