Atmospheric humidity is usually very low except during what are called " Gulf surges ", when a maritime tropical air mass from the Gulf of California is drawn northward, usually in connection with the summer monsoon or the passage of a tropical storm to the south.
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The reason for this is that this country is in a unique geographic position that places it right in the middle of a collision between the cold polar air mass that comes down from the North Pole and the moist tropical air mass coming up from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.
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Ken Morrin, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service at Brookhaven on Long Island, said the torrential rains were dropped by a huge tropical air mass that had been gathering moisture from the Atlantic as it moved up from the South in recent days . Arriving in the metropolitan area, it collided with a slower-moving warm air mass and, in effect, climbed up over it.
