As The Weather World Turns

Over on the "Weather Questions" forum on WeatherMatrix, joshua21777 asked the question:

Joshua, you are essentially correct. The weather in the Northern Hemisphere generally moves constantly in one direction (mainly west to east, north of the Tropics). If you looked at the top half of the earth from the North Pole, most weather systems would appear to constantly move counter-clockwise.

You can see this if you check out this animation from the GFS computer forecasting model, showing the movement of low (blue) and high (red) pressure systems during the next two weeks, looking down on the North Pole. (It gets choppy near the end because the time between images goes from 3 hours to 12 hours, as the second half of the model is only able to generate a forecast every 12 hours). That animation is from our AccuWeather.com Professional service. Notice also that, while systems generally rotate around the earth, they also morph into one another and some systems get squeezed between others. This is not unlike the fluid dynamics you might observe in a stream topped with foam or pollen.

October 2005 Satellite
Animation (Click to Enlarge)

You can also see the clouds moving around the Earth on the satellite animation above, which shows one satellite map for each day of October 2005. And finally, you can observe the rotating clouds on this Antarctica Satellite animation, which shows the movement of clouds looking "down" on the South Pole.

When I was in school earning my degree in Meteorology in the mid 1990's, the idea of "teleconnections" was coming into favor and AccuWeather.com Professional's Joe Bastardi mentions this idea frequently. At that time the term referred to the relationship over space and time between weather systems on different parts of the globe. For example, a strong storm in Japan might lead to, or teleconnect, a strong storm over some part of the United States several days later, when that system has made its track around the globe. "Teleconnections" now also refers to things like El Nino and La Nina, whereby unusually warm or cold Pacific ocean temperatures result in stormy (or dry) weather over certain parts of the U.S.