A useful heuristic is to imagine air starting from rest, experiencing a force directed from areas of high pressure toward areas of low pressure, called the pressure gradient force. If the air began to move in response to that force, however, the Coriolis "force" would deflect it, to the right of the motion in the northern hemisphere or to the left in the southern hemisphere. As the air accelerated, the deflection would increase until the Coriolis forces strength and direction balanced the pressure gradient force, a state called  geostrophic balance. At this point, the flow is no longer moving from high to low pressure, but instead moves along isobars. Geostrophic balance helps to explain why, in the northern hemisphere, low-pressure systems (or cyclones) spin counterclockwise and high-pressure systems (or anticyclones') spin clockwise, and the opposite in the southern hemisphere.