A weather map is, in essence, like a topographic map: if in the latter the curves tell us about a distribution of heights above sea level, in the former we have a pressure distribution.
Thus, the anticyclone is an area of high pressure and the storm, of low. This is known, but less so is the fact that anticyclones are not the exact counterpart to storms . First of all, its size is much larger: an anticyclone can easily cover all of Western Europe. Second, they are usually anchored in a preferred position, around which they oscillate: hence the name of the Azores anticyclone, or the Siberian …
In fact, in the northern hemisphere the most permanent characteristics of the maps at sea level (which are the ones we usually see) are four, called “subtropical high pressure cells” due to their location on the planet (between 20 and 30º latitude ): the one over Bermuda-Azores, the one in Sonora, in the south and southwest of the United States, the one in the east and north of the Pacific (very large and powerful, which is usually divided into two in summer), and the one in the Sahara.
These cells are essential as they provide the key to understanding the global circulation of surface winds, such as the trade winds, which blow over almost half of the earth’s globe. And thirdly, the depressions are like funnels but the anticyclones are not like mountains but they look like plateaus.
