Tropical Storm Season Not Quite Over

"We saw 87° water in a number of places on the way from La Paz to here on Banderas Bay," Arjan Bok, the San Francisco owner of the Schionning 43 cat Rot Kat told Latitude about a week ago. "We saw it up in Mazatlan, at Isla Isabella, and other places."

Warm water is one of the ingredients for tropical storms and hurricanes, of course. So it’s not a complete surprise that the National Hurricane Center has issued an alert for Tropical Storm Rick to be whipping around far off the coast of Mexico over the next several days. As far offshore as it is, and with maximum winds of 40 mph, Rick shouldn’t be too much of a concern.

Some people assume that very warm water is all you need for the formation of tropical storms and hurricanes. But that’s not true, as there are many places in the world with warm ocean temperatures that never get tropical storms.

The waters off the Pacific Coast of Mexico have been very warm this year and are still quite warm. But it would be wrong to assume that warmer water has resulted in more tropical storms. Indeed, there were more tropical storms and hurricanes in 2014 and 2013, and just as many in 2012, when the water wasn’t particularly warm.