Tropical vs Subtropical. What’s the difference between?

Ajouté : 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]On May 15th, the National Hurricane Center starts putting out tropical weather advisories. And in the month of May, it's not unheard of to actually get tropical systems. But what you more likely will see is the term subtropical.

[00:00:14]So let's talk about the difference between a subtropical storm and a tropical storm. Thing with a subtropical, it has some of those tropical characteristics like a warm coro, but what you start to see is a little bit of thermal advection. So things like warm fronts and cold fronts start to build up and the max amount of winds like we see in a tropical system are right near the center. Subtropical it will be further away from the center with a larger windfield away and typically towards the north and east of the center of low pressure area. This can make a big difference in areas that are impacted as well as the displacement of the amount of rainfall. But I think the key thing is it boils down to dynamics. A tropical system relies on warm sea surface temperatures to kind of fuel it up versus subtropical and extrropical that's more about thermodynamics in cold air or warm air adection. I know it's a lot of terminology but really on satellite picture you can clearly see the difference between both of these systems. Of course, if anything does develop, we'll keep you posted here at First