Hurricanes can constitute serious threats the safety and well-being of coastal areas susceptible to the effects of meteorological disturbances. For residents of coastal areas where hurricanes can be a threatening reality, being well appraised of hurricane facts can be an effective tool for maximizing efforts to avoid the threatening effects of hurricanes and assuring themselves of safety. As yet the gathering of hurricane facts by scientists involved in studying them as meteorological phenomena has not produced many preventive methods for actively decreasing the power and intensity of a hurricane event. A useful hurricane fact is more likely to provide some indication as how to respond to the potential threat posed by the imminent landfall of a storm, and also possibly some contextual understanding of the ramifications of living in an area that might be unusually vulnerable to the arrival of hurricanes. One hurricane fact that can give a sense of the degree of the threat posed by a storm as contrasted with the limitations of the effects it can have. Hurricane facts related to the dissipation of these phenomena are thus useful tools for the residents of coastal areas.

An essential point made by hurricane facts is that the scientific categorization and understanding of these storms is rooted in a view of them as being essentially tropical. A hurricane can be considered as such by lieu of exhibiting tropical characteristics, and the hurricane fact of dissipation occurs when the storm is deprived of these tropical features. Residents preparing for the effect of hurricane landfall should be aware of the hurricane fact that these storms will dissipate if by moving over land they are deprived of the warm water which provides them with energy. A study of hurricane facts will show the usual trend for storms to lose their essential characteristics in a day or two after moving over land. In the area of hurricane facts related to safety, mountainous areas can be particularly dangerous when confronted by hurricanes due to the rapid weakening process they trigger in these areas. In the process of disintegrating, hurricanes release vast quantities of water over the area below and thus have the potential to cause great loss of life in these periods.

A related hurricane fact relates to this phenomenon and stems from the same basic need of a hurricane for some source of warm water. Rather than disintegrating over land, hurricanes can break apart upon reaching sections of ocean that are filled with water existing at a temperature that is far below 26.5 °C (79.7 °F). After this process of disintegration, the newly cooled hurricane will become a remnant low-pressure area , which possesses the capability to last in this state for a period of several days. These hurricane facts illuminating one manner in which they can halted has proven interesting to scientists and government officials with ambitions for finding artificial methods for stopping hurricanes. This hurricane fact was implemented in the 1970s U.S. government program Project Stormfury, which proved, however, unsuccessful in its use of silver iodide seeding.

Hurricane season 2010 is already one for the record books, tying for third most active with 19 named storms. Three weeks remain in the official season and a disorganized disturbance is drifting in the Caribbean about where Tomas was two weeks ago.

In other words, as National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen put it, “Don’t raid the hurricane supplies yet. It’s not over until it’s over.”

But with the days, and chances, dwindling until the season ends on Nov. 30, South Florida is close to once again dodging a hail of tropical bullets — along with the entire United States mainland .

So far, there have been a dozen hurricanes and not one has made landfall in the U.S. — a streak of good fortune not seen in more than 100 years, according to Adam Lea, a hurricane researcher at University College London.

The center of Hurricane Tomas was moving through the Windward Passage. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite captured a visible image of Hurricane Tomas at 15:30 UTC (11:30 a.m. EDT), just before it started moving through the Windward Passage.

Located in the Caribbean Sea, the Windward Passage is a strait located between eastern Cuba and the northwest of Haiti.

In satellite imagery, Tomas’ convection (rapidly rising air that forms the thunderstorms that power the tropical cyclone) was described by the National Hurricane Center as "looking a little ragged" hinting that they are weaker and possibly more disorganized, due to the interaction with the mountains of Hispaniola.

Bands of strong thunderstorms are wrapping around the center of Tropical Storm Anggrek in the Southern Indian Ocean, according to satellite imagery. NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an infrared look at those strong thunderstorms .

NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over Anggrek on Nov. 3 at 07:05 UTC and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard captured an infrared image of the cold thunderstorms within the system. The image showed that strong, high thunderstorm cloud tops tightly circled the storm’s center. There was also strong convection along the southern edge of the low-level center of circulation.

At 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT), Tropical Storm Anggrek’s maximum sustained winds were near 50 knots (57 mph) with higher gusts. It was about 140 nautical miles south of the Cocos Islands near 14.6 South and 96.9 East. It was moving southwest near 7 mph and is expected to continue moving in that direction.

Anggrek is in an area of moderate vertical wind shear (winds that can weaken and tear apart a tropical cyclone). By the weekend, Anggrek is forecast to steadily weaken and dissipate as it encounters cooler waters and stronger wind shear.