Lysis, that's an excellent analogy. Hurricanes are generally thought of as heat engines -- in fact, we think of them as Carnot cycles (of energy/heat); that's where all of the theory behind the last descriptive post came from -- although not perfect ones (we generally see an efficiency of about 33% with most tropical systems). It's still got some energy left over as it makes landfall, but afterward, it really is just running on fumes. The circulation begins to decay; if conditions are right, it may become extratropical and redevelop that way (probably not going to see that here); and the engine eventually stops as a tropical cyclone. Extratropical cyclones are a whole 'norther story, one I'll leave for another day, but the analogy definitely holds for a tropical cyclone.