Hurricane Ike's Sprawl a Meteorological Mystery

Sept. 12, 2008 -- Hurricanes come in all sizes, from speedy little cyclones with small sharp teeth to giants that maw and pummel away at large swaths of earth for days. Ike is one of the latter -- a super-sized storm with winds howling over vast fetches of water, piling up massive storm surges like those now being seen in Texas.

Considering the vastly different dangers posed by these storms, it's natural to wonder just why some storms get so big while others stay small, despite having the same hurricane-force winds. Why, in other words, is Ike such a titan?

"This is actually a very important and unresolved question in the science right now," said senior scientist Chris Davis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. There are a few theories out there, he said, some of which look to the number of cloud clusters around a storm in its early days.

But nothing solid has been shown to account for why some grow and others don't.

The mystery is very likely tightly bound to another one of meteorology's tough nuts to crack, Davis told Discovery News.

"I think there is an answer that we will come to know when we learn how these cyclones form," he said. The secret is probably somewhere in their initial size, he said, as well as some crucial points later in the storm's life.

Some things can be gleaned from looking at the history of the largest tropical cyclones -- the technical term for these storms. The largest, for instance, are generally created in the western Pacific Ocean, said Davis. This is most likely because the Pacific is home to the largest swath of warm tropical water on Earth, giving storms lots of time, space and energy to grow before hitting land and falling apart.