Margot slammed on the brakes and made a clockwise loop when it ran into high pressure first to its north. It fizzled soon after that loop was closed, partially due to tracking over cooler water it churned up while moving slowly.

At a Glance

Some tropical storm and hurricane tracks are rather straight.Others, however, take bizarre tracks.Weak or changing steering winds aloft is often the culprit for these erratic tracks.

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H​urricanes and tropical storms sometimes take strange tracks, as we're seeing with the double back path of right now in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Some tropical cyclones follow very clear tracks. For example,a curve around the south and west sides of the Bermuda-Azores high in the Atlantic Basin, or just a straight east-to-west buzzsaw through the Caribbean Sea.

In these cases, the atmosphere's steering flow is strong and persistent enough to keep the hurricane on a steady path. Those forecast tracks are relatively straightforward.

Other hurricanes and tropical storms, however, take stranger journeys. The paths these storms trace out may resemble a child's first drawing, proudly displayed on the refrigerator. These tended to fall into several categories. We have many examples of each in our slideshow atop this article.

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Loopers

These tropical storms and hurricanes made at least one loop, crossing their previous path once or more. A few performed multiple loops, with paths resembling a helix.

Often in a loopercase, a weakdisturbance in the jet stream will brush north of the hurricane or tropical storm, pulling it northeast or east, but won't be strong enough to carry it away.

Behind that, higher pressure aloft will then curve the system back toward the south. Once that same high-pressure system aloft moves to the east, the hurricane or tropical stormwill curl back toward the west, then northwest again, closing off the loop.

H​urricanes Don and Margot each made such a loop over the North Atlantic in 2023. Margot's loop was small, while Don's was much more broad and elliptical before . Each of these tracks are in the slideshow above.

Hurricane Juan in 1985 did even better, looping twice near the Louisiana coast. Of course, that slow movement near land led to widespread flooding in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Hurricane Juan did a double loop near or over the Louisiana coast in 1985.

(Data: NOAA/NHC)

Double-Backers

These reversed course and followed a similar segment of their path.

Double-backers occur when the steering flow in the upper atmosphere reverses from what it was previously.

Sometimes these tropical cyclones can weaken a bit if they track over a wake of cooler water churned up on their previous leg.

is doing just that off the Pacific coast of Central America. In September 2022, also did that over the open North Atlantic Ocean after brushing the Azores in September 2022.

The most notorious recent example of a double-backer was in 2015, which moved southwestward and then stalled and hammered the central Bahamas at peak intensity before moving northeast almost exactly on its previous path.

The portion of Hurricane Joaquin's track where it virtually doubled back over its previous track after hammering the central Bahamas.

(Data: NOAA/NHC)

Scribblers

The scribblers are the strangest of the bunch. These take paths so chaotic that, again, a toddler might be the only one to draw it successfully.

They tend to occur when steering winds aloft are persistently erratic and weak.

Perhaps the best recent example of this was Hurricane Leslie in 2018. Leslie meandered over the North Atlantic Ocean for more than two weeks before finally approaching the Iberian Peninsula, where it held on to hurricane strength until it was within 195 miles of Lisbon, Portugal.

The bizarre track of Hurricane Leslie in 2018, including a rough bowtie, and nearly landfalling in Portugal as a hurricane.

(Data: NOAA/NHC)

No hurricane in the historical record had ever been observed in the eastern Atlantic Basin where Leslie was located west of Portugal. Leslie did not strike Portugal as a hurricane but did spread heavy rain and strong winds through the country as a post-tropical cyclone.

See if you can follow Leslie initially near the center of this satellite loop posted at the time by The Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro:

Most importantly, these strange wanderers can be a major forecast challenge. Subtle changes in steering winds aloft can mean the difference between a hurricane drifting west toward land or drifting northeast, remaining out to sea.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. He studied physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then completed his Master's degree working with dual-polarization radar and lightning data at Colorado State University. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads and Facebook.

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