Meddies can have maximum salinities around 36.5 and maximum temperatures around 13°C and they are observed as large anomalies (salinity anomaly ~1 and temperature anomaly ~4 °C) as they travel westward into cooler and fresher water. During their trip, the Mediterranean water inside the meddy slowly mixes with the surrounding Atlantic water and the salt anomaly progressively weakens until the meddy dissipates. The main processes causing mixing occur at the boundary of a meddy where the largest gradients of temperature and salinity exist and are double-diffusion and thermohaline intrusions as large as 25 m thick (Meunier et al., 2015).

^{From Tychensky et Carton, 1998. (http://outreach.eurosites.info/outreach/DeepOceans/station.php?id=10&page_inc=fact)}

Meddies average lifespan is around 1.7 years although some were observed for more than 5 years (Richardson et al., 2000). During that time they travel distances up to one thousand kilometers and their maintained mostly because the core of the meddy tends to have a doubly-stable stratification (Armi et al., 1989). Up to 29 meddies may coexist in the North Atlantic at the same time (Richardson et al., 2000).

^{From Univ. of Delaware (http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0603/21whirlpools/)}