Are those Calm Belts without hurricanes the reason it's so difficult to enter the Grand Line?
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
261 points (96.1% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
3451 readers
114 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Does anyone know what the reason for this is?
Apparently,
Because of things like Coriolis effect and convective currents, there just aren’t winds that blow across the equator, not at the scale that would blow a hurricane from one hemisphere to the other anyway.
Winds tend to blow along and away from the equator, not across it.
The earth spins faster at the equator, which is the reason for the rotation of hurricanes. They spin counter clockwise north of the equator and clockwise south of it.
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/coriolis-effect/
Edit: The reason they don't cross is not because of the Coriolis effect working against the original rotation direction if a hurricane crosses the equator, but rather because the storms are moving away from the equator
For a second I thought it was another one of those "for the first time in recorded history" things
Give it a few more years
This map is a great illustration of why the "ty" of typhoon is from the "Tai" of Taiwan in the original meaning of the word.
Bonus fun fact - "hurricane" is from a native Caribbean word, from the same language family as another loanword "hammock".
This sounds interesting as heck, what do you mean this map is a great illustration of the original meaning of the word?
For some reason I thought the word typhoon popped into vernacular around the 1940s, but I think that story might be made up now that I'm older and thinking about it.
It's from 台风 (sounds like typhon, more than it sound like typhoon tbh) and tbh the "ty" part might just be from "dai" meaning "big", so just "big wind", but I've heard it's just as likely to be "wind from Taiwan", the same 台 ty as in 台風, Taiwan.
And yeah, this map proves that Taiwan (and northern Philippines) is the world capital of strong typhoons.
That's cool as heck! Thanks for the info!
The Grand Line!
Yet
Is it just me or does this world map look off?
Most map projections dramatically underestimate the size of the Pacific Ocean:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/point-nemo
We're just not used to seeing this half of the planet depicted, and the Pacific IS almost half of the entire planet.
It is centered on the Pacific Ocean, which is a bit unusual indeed
This probably isn't what happened to you, but my brain assumed the dark areas were the land masses for a good long while until I realized why it looked like a nonsense map lol
That happened to me too! Was fighting my brain to remember water blue
Looks pretty typical for an Aussie. Pacific in the middle.
Fuck Australia and Asia I guess
God bless em they still keep trying
With today's technology and know how, nothing is beyond our reach