Why Is It That Hurricanes Dont Form Off The Coast Of California ? ?

Question

U never see hurricanes hitting California or anywhere out west, only states on the east coast & down on the Gulf. Why is that?

Answer 1

hurricanes draws there energy from somewhere else.

Answer 2

The Pacific ocean is significantly colder than the Atlantic/Caribbean.  It is the heat of surface waters that powers hurricanes, which are really just giant heat engines.

This also means that the rising ocean temperatures portend stronger hurricanes in the future.

Answer 3

I have lived on the west coast most of my life. I spent 21 years in the Navy, all of it in the Pacific. I too, wondered this. The answer is The Japanese Current which runs clockwise in the Pacific. This current pulls colder water down the coast. Hurricanes draw their energy from warmer water. Storm systems DO form in the pacific and travel north and east from Hawaii toward the coast, but they do not get the boost from warmer water that storm system off the east coast get, so they never get strong enough to be called a hurricane. Since the Pacific currents rotate clockwise, the warmer water goes further west which feeds the storms which form to the west of Hawaii and results in typhoons (hurricanes) in the Pacific Islands like the Philippines and such. The only reason storm systems get to the coast is that they are driven by where the jet stream is and the trade winds which DO flow toward the coast from Hawaii. Or so I was told, when I asked a long time ago. In the east, the warm water is traveling north along with the prevailing winds, so the warmer water feeds the storm and may result in a hurricane being driven onto the gulf or east coast. Watch the national weather and look for where the jet streams are and the weather systems and how they move. Bad storms, big storms DO make it to the west coast and drop lots of rain which causes flooding from time to time, but without the added boost from warm water traveling with the storm as it does with the east coast storms, it never kickstarts into a hurricane.