Where are the roaring forties the furious fifties and the screaming sixties?

Answer 1

The forties, fifties and sixties refer to latitudes on the earth, in this case, in the Southern Hemisphere in the 40°S, 50°S and 60°S degrees.

These latitudes are notorious, especially for mariners, because they are home to extremely rough and dangerous seas due to the frequent storms and heavy wave action that develop at these latitudes. These strong winds are more prevalent in the southern hemisphere where the north-south temperature gradient separating the extremely cold air mass over Antarctica and the relatively warmer waters of the adjacent oceans occur.

Since ocean surrounds Antarctica, a special atmospheric circulation arises called the circumpolar vortex in which the extremely cold and dry air over the Antarctic land and ice masses do not routinely mix with the relatively warmer moist maritime air mass over the adjacent oceanic water. Storms routinely form on these high temperature gradient regions and result in higher wind speeds. The higher the temperature gradient, or baro-clinicity, the higher the wind speeds will develop the large scale storm systems.

Stronger storms do form in the northern hemisphere, but are typically confined to the northern hemisphere winter months when the north-south temperature gradient is highest. Because there is more land in the Northern Hemisphere, these storms are not as dangerous to mariners as are those in the Southern Hemisphere.