A storm or a hurricane seems such a wild, uncontrolled thing that it’s hard to believe it is following a definite path. Yet, as we know, when the hurricane season starts, the hurricanes are given names and their courses are often predicted very accurately!

In most parts of the world, most storms do move in definite directions. In the United States, for example, most big storms are vast circular whirls of air that rotate counterclockwise about a central point of low atmospheric pressure. The reason they rotate counterclockwise in the United States is that, as winds flow in toward the center of low pressure, the earth’s rotation deflects them toward the right (in the Northern Hemisphere).