[Aztlan] hurricane/huracán

[Susan Gilchrist]

Does anyone know when Europeans figured out that hurricanes
go in a circle, always counter-clockwise (at least north of the equator)?
I've just been looking at Peter Martyr's first three decades, and
he only talks about wind and rising seas.
I've found a reference to Fernandez de Oviedo saying about a
1508 storm that lasted 24 hours that "the wind commenced at
North, driving ships from their moorings, and subsequently
changed suddenly to an opposite quarter, blowing then from
the South as violently and with as much fury as before from
the North. The Indians distinguished these excessively
tempestuous storms as *huracanes*."
It seems as though people in hurricane areas must have known
from the way the wind stops and then starts up again that
the whole thing was going in a circle.
On a practical level, it would have been nice to know that
the sudden calm when the eye passes over is the half-way
point, not the end of the storm.
Did the Maya represent hurricanes as circular? or like a
huge whirlwind? Or did they go first one way, then
the other?
Any help would be appreciated.--Susan Gilchrist