The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle

Wild weather

The landscape of the island of Bermuda is quite unique: it is a remote coral reef precariously perched on a massive extinct volcano. Fisherman Sloan Wakefield, who knows the waters of the Bermuda Triangle very well, thinks that the weather could be responsible for some of the disappearances. "Because the island is a dot in the Atlantic Ocean, it gets weather from everywhere and it can change in a heartbeat. One minute, you can be looking at good weather, and the next moment you've got a low front coming through," he says. He has already seen 15 to 20 foot (4.6m to 6m) waves on the sea.

Credit: NASA

 

An image of Tropical Storm Harvey, which hit Bermuda in August 2005.

Hurricanes are common in the Bermuda Triangle area. In the Atlantic Ocean, they typically originate off the African coast and thrive off the moisture of the warm, tropical waters. Hurricane records from the past 100 years have shown that they often head west for the United States but swerve into the waters of the Bermuda Triangle at the last minute. Jim Lushine, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida studies the weather in the Bermuda Triangle and says that there are more hurricanes in that particular area than in any other in the Atlantic basin.

But thunderstorms in the area can be just as dangerous. In 1986, a historic ship called the Pride of Baltimore vanished from radar screens while it was in the Bermuda Triangle, making a trip from the Caribbean to Baltimore. About four and a half days later, the wreckage and eight survivors were found and they revealed that the ship had been hit by a microburst: 80 mile per hour winds emanating from a freak thunderstorm. It happened so quickly that the crew didn't have time to make a distress call. "The ship was sunk in the downburst, unfortunately with a great loss of life," says Lushine. "Similar downbursts are probably responsible for some of the sunken ships in the Bermuda Triangle."

Even more unpredictable than thunderstorms are waterspouts. These can be caused by tornadoes that move out to sea or rotating columns of air that drop from thunderstorms, creating a vortex of spray. When the moisture condenses, it forms a twisting column that connects the sea to the clouds. Jim Edds, an amateur fisherman who chases and films waterspouts for fun, says that if you are out at night and a tornado-like waterspout develops - the really big, strong ones with high velocity - it can flip your vessel over.