ITCZ
05:19 PM EDT - 19 April 2001

The East Pacific Hurricane season starts up on May 15th, which is half a month before the Atlantic hurricane season. Most of the time, the Pacific has more named storms than the Atlantic, but a few years (like 1995) it's the opposite.

One sign of activity is the Intratropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), or a band of low pressure which forms over the regions of the warmest waters and land masses in the tropics. The ITCZ is easily spotted. It's usually on satellite images as the band of bright clouds located just north of the equator. And this time of the year it starts to get active. But not until Late July and August when it creeps slightly northward does much come from it, but it does show the waters are warm.