ALTHOUGH you may suspect he is a boxer or wrestler, Hector is actually a storm. Meteorologists give names to large weather systems like hurricanes and typhoons, and although Hector is not as large as those, it is remarkable in its own way. Hector is one of the most regular, predictable, and consistent storms in the world. In many ways, it is the forever storm.
Just off the coast of Northern Australia near the city of Darwin lie the Tiwi Islands of Melville and Bathhurst. Each day at 3 p.m., from September through December, a large storm cloud appears over the islands and dumps heavy rain. It is so predictable you could plausibly set your watch to it. What set of circumstances leads to such a regular act of nature?
The Tiwi Islands are both shaped like pyramids. When the warm, moist ocean air blows into them, it has nowhere to go but up, a process known as convection. The sea breeze climbs until it runs into cooler, drier air several miles in the atmosphere and the mix becomes unstable. Since cool air cannot hold as much moisture as warm air, the extra water forms up as rain and falls back down as a shower.
The perfect combination of ocean temperatures, wind patterns and composition, and island topography create a truly remarkable act of nature more predictable than the Monsoon, as dependable as a solar eclipse or the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park.
Hector does not always appear in exactly the same form, however. It releases different amounts of rainfall depending on how moist the air is. Sometimes it forms as two cloud heads rather than one massive one, and the shapes and sizes of the cloud vary as much as the sunsets, which is one reason why Hector has many fans.
During the Second World War, sailors and pilots used Hector as a navigational marker since it could be seen from so far away and was always spot-on. Its unusual shape made it readily recognizable.
Due to its predictable nature, Hector is the most heavily studied weather system in the world. Where else can scientists find a storm at exactly the right time and place every day? Hector has taught us so much about the life cycle of storms that it is safe to say that it has influenced your local weather forecast. National Geographic did a special on the system, complete with photos of local storm damage and a discussion of lightning, tornadoes and other storm-related phenomena.
Since the conditions that cause Hector are static, there is no reason to think the storm will not continue into the distant future. Hector could exist forever. If you find yourself in Northern Australia, take time to see Hector the Convector, the Old Faithful of weather systems.
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for 20 years. He currently resides on the mainland U.S.
BC Cook
