Hurricane Central

The Weirdest Hurricane and Tropical Storm Tracks

At a Glance

Some tropical cyclones follow bizarre tracks.
Weak or changing steering winds aloft is often the culprit for these erratic tracks.

Some paths hurricanes and tropical storms take are just plain strange.

Your child's first drawing you proudly put up on the refrigerator may have resembled one of these bizarre tracks.

Tropical cyclones follow very clear tracks, for example, a curve around the south and west sides of the Bermuda-Azores high in the Atlantic Basin, or just a straight buzzsaw through the Caribbean Sea.

In these cases, the atmosphere's steering flow is strong and persistent enough to keep the hurricane on a steady path. Forecast tracks of those are, relatively straightforward.

Then, you have the others.

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We've picked 16 of our favorite weird tracks since the era of routine satellite coverage of the Atlantic Basin began in 1966.

These tended to fall into several categories:

Loopers: Those that made at least one loop, crossing their previous path at least once. A few performed multiple loops, with paths resembling a helix.
Double-backers: Those that reversed course and followed a similar segment of their path
Scribblers: A path so chaotic that, again, a toddler might be the only one to draw it successfully

Often times in a looper case, a weak disturbance in the jet stream will brush to the north of the hurricane or tropical storm, pulling it northeast or east, but won't be strong enough to carry it away.

Behind that, higher pressure aloft will then curve the system back toward the south. Once that same high-pressure system aloft moves to the east, the hurricane or tropical storm will curl back toward the west, then northwest again.

In this way, you can get a loop, as occurred with Hurricane Jeanne in 2004, for example.

(MORE: Where Every U.S. Landfalling Hurricane Since 1966 Began Its Journey)

Double-backers occur when the steering flow in the upper atmosphere reverses from what it was previously. Sometimes these tropical cyclones can weaken a bit if they track over a wake of cooler water churned up on their previous leg.

The scribblers are the strangest of the bunch. These tend to occur when steering winds aloft are persistently erratic and weak.

Perhaps the best recent example of this was the latter stage of Hurricane Nadine in 2012, which took a bizarre path featuring several changes in direction and loops over its previous paths.

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Most importantly, these strange wanderers can be a big forecast challenge. Subtle changes in steering winds aloft can mean the difference between a hurricane drifting west toward land or drifting northeast, remaining out to sea.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.