What’s the difference between a Hurricane, a Typhoon and a Cyclone?
A cyclone is the Southern Hemisphere version of a hurricane, the only difference being it moves clockwise. Typhoon is the term used in Asia for a hurricane (coming from Chinese “Big Wind”), IIRC.
But the word “cyclone” is also used to mean a number of other things. It can be used in meteorology to describe any circular air flow around an area of low pressure. So there are such things as mid-latitude cyclones, which are what the storm systems that affect the weather in most of the US are called. “Cyclone” is also used by some Americans to mean tornado, though some tornadoes are not cyclones in a meteorological sense (they can turn either counterclockwise or clockwise in either hemisphere).
In Cantonese it’s “dah fung” - literally “beat wind” - figuratively, “the wind that hits”. Not sure about Mandarin, but I guess it’s the same meaning.
We have lots of anticyclones here, which areas of high pressure and usually bring good weather.
They are all cyclonic storms. That is they are storms with circulation that is counterclockwise around a low pressure in the northern hemisphere and the reverse in the southern hemisphere.
Tornados are violent, localized circulations. I’m not sure that coriolis effect is the cause of the circulation in tornados as is the case with the cyclonic storms. It seems to me that tornados are too localized to be affected by coriolis.
They are too small to be affected by the Coriolis force (just like water in sinks and toilet bowls). But some Americans do call them cyclones. Most tornadoes do rotate cyclonically, but some don’t.
My father’s family farm was wiped out by a tornado that went on to destroy most of the small town of Pomeroy, IA. The storm was forever after called the Pomeroy Cyclone.
Location, location, location.
You know, I’ve lived in the Midwest all my life, I’ve never heard a tornado referred to as a “cyclone”. Tornado, whirlwind, funnel cloud, “#&$! get under cover there’s a @##)! on the way!”… but never cyclone. Huh.
- The Cyclone
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar–except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.
Otara
The official term for a cyclone in Australia is tropical cyclone, and once it develops winds above 125 kph (category 3), it becomes a severe tropical cyclone. A weather system with cyclonic flow in the tropics that does not have strong winds is called a tropical low.
It’s an old-timey word in the USA anymore. Iowa State University teams have been the Cyclones since at least 1900, and the Cyclone coaster at Coney Island has been there since 1927. (Interestingly enough, a predecessor was called the Tornado.)
Dammit! Not only did you steal my answer, you then used it three times. That’s just unnecessary.
As has already been noted, the term “cyclone” has three different meanings:
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The generic term for a rotating low-pressure system, not necessarily involving anything worse than a little rain.
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The Australian/New Zealand/Southwest Pacific term for what is called a hurricane or tropical storm in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific.
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The Midwest U.S. slang term, now growing a bit obsolete, for a tornado.
A “cyclone” with a name, like Cyclone Larry in Queensland, is a storm that meets definition 2, and differs from a hurricane only in its location (and, as noted, in the direction of rotation).
If I remember correctly, the circulation that develops into a tornado typically starts off about a horizontal axis (like a rolling pin), and gradually rotates into a mostly-vertical axis as it gets stronger. So unless there’s some preference on which way it rotates, you shouldn’t see a preference for either handedness in the final tornado. But it’s been about 7 years since I took a meteorology class, so take this with a grain of cloud-seeding salt.
As I understand it, there are actually twelve types.
Oh, wait, those are Cylons.
This rapidly rotating mass would have some of the characteristics of a gyroscope. It could be possible that the typical pressure gradients result in a preferential direction of rotation and subsequent tilting that makes most of them rotate in some preferred direction.