General Principles
It appears that a significant number of hurricanes, which later cross the USA coastline, form in the Atlantic in latitudes around 15°N and longitude 40 - 60°W. Pre-requisites appear to include a sea temperature >26°C and the weak degree of Coriolis effect present in these latitudes. It also turns out that a hurricane derives its power by harnessing the incoming energy from the sun in exactly the same way as a steam engine converts the heat from its fuel into mechanical work.
Perhaps surprisingly, hurricanes are very inefficient users of the sun’s energy with a theoretical maximum efficiency of under 5%. They thus depend on huge inputs of insolation. Their inefficiency compares with the efficiency of a modern steam plant using fossil fuel, for which the figure can be as high as 65%.
The start of the steam engine/hurricane analogy is the evaporation of sea water by the incoming energy from the sun. This is the equivalent of the steam engine's boiler however, by operating at atmospheric pressure and temperature, no containment is needed. As the surface air temperature increases, instability develops in the lower levels of the atmosphere and thermals occur ¹. Randomly a particular thermal will occur in an area of lower pressure which reinforces the inflow of warm humid air to feed the thermal. In theory Coriolis effect causes the inflowing air to turn to the right until it flows parallel to the isobars. In the presence of a closed isobar situation this rotation will, again in theory, cut off the inflow necessary to feed the thermal. In practice however, the boundary layer at the surface (say the lowest 300m of the atmosphere) is subject to surface friction which slows it down thus reducing the Coriolis effect which no longer balances the pressure gradient. The flow in this layer (the boundary layer) therefore has an inflow component. This convergent airflow has no way to go other than upwards thus providing a continuous feed for the original thermal, so long as there continues to be positive buoyancy relative to the surrounding air mass.
The rising air will, as the altitude increases, expand and cool (analogous to the expansion of steam in a steam engine) and will shortly reach condensation level. At this point the latent heat of evaporation originally provided by the sun is recovered as the water vapour condenses; this greatly increases the positive buoyancy. The effect is that we now have a system which is strongly self-sustaining and may well turn into a hurricane.
¹ This effect is reinforced by the fact that water vapour is lighter than air at the same pressure and temperature.