The Bermuda high is a semi-permanent high-pressure system located over the northern Atlantic. It is essential to know that high-pressure systems rotate clockwise while low-pressure systems rotate counterclockwise.
The Bermuda High is also known as the Azores High. It is the same system, but depending on where this high-pressure system is located, the name changes. Typically, during the summer and fall months, the high is situated closer to Bermuda. During the winter and spring, this high-pressure system is centered closer to the Azores.
During the summer and fall months, the Bermuda high guides tropical systems. It keeps any tropical waves mainly traveling from Africa toward the Americas. Now, depending on its positioning and strength, the high-pressure system could allow storms to keep a westward track, at times landing in the United States, or if it’s shifted more over the central Atlantic or the eastern Atlantic, then the storms tend to recurve to the north. The storms that tend to make this curve and not affect land are often referred to as fish storms.
Forecasting the strength of the Bermuda high during the tropical season is exceptionally challenging. More importantly, it is impossible to know precisely when and where the high-pressure system will be located during the tropical season. The Bermuda high tends to move and shift positions, and also gain strength or become weaker.
This subtropical semi-permanent high-pressure system is a surface feature. It has a big influence on the weather across the eastern seaboard, including Florida. Oftentimes at the beginning of the summer, the high-pressure system provides plenty of heat and humidity toward this area, which, along with other local features, ignites thunderstorms along the east coast of the United States. There are times when the Bermuda high could nose into the Gulf and provide plenty of heat and moisture even to parts of the Gulf Coast states as well as parts of the southern Plains.
