# "Hurricane" Huron (1996)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 10, 2025, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589 "2025-12-10T16:57:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589/1 "2025-12-10T16:57:58Z")
If [”Hurricane” Huron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Lake_Huron_cyclone) were plunked down in the middle of the western Caribbean or had somehow migrated there, would there be any reason not to say it was a hurricane rather than an extratropical cyclone? Didn’t it have all the attributes of a hurricane (albeit a weak one), except for a tropical origin? Is there a useful reason for defining hurricanes (and typhoons, I guess) as necessarily forming in the tropics? _Are_ they so defined?
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### Author:  [@DaveUnknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveUnknown)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589/2 "2025-12-10T17:17:04Z")
Tropical storms and hurricanes evolve from deep layer convection around the tropics. The storm over lake Huron was a frontal interaction.
Are you based in Columbus?
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2025, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589/3 "2025-12-10T19:03:17Z")
The short version is the “tropical” and “non-tropical” terminology as to storms is _not_ about latitude at all.
It’s about how the storm forms and what powers it. An extratropical cyclone is a cold-core storm. A tropical cyclone is a warm-core storm. Very different physics at work even though the outcome of each is a multi-hundred wile wide swirling mass of air.
This is the relevant article: **[Cyclone - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone)** that will explain all this to you.
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### Author:  [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589/4 "2025-12-11T15:59:43Z")
“It’s not about latitude at all.”
Ah, okay this makes sense. Thanks.
“Are you based in Columbus?”
Huhn?
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### Author:  [@DaveUnknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveUnknown)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589/5 "2025-12-11T16:11:58Z")
NOAA defines hurricanes as “products of the tropical ocean and atmosphere.”
> **[Defining a Hurricane](https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/graphics/lib/defining.html)**
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2025, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589/6 "2025-12-11T17:15:39Z")
I didn’t mention it, but as this other related article **[Tropical cyclone - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone)** makes clear there are traditional non-technical terms for intense tropical cyclones that are absolutely synonymous.
A “typhoon”, a “hurricane”, and a “tropical cyclone” are exactly the same physical phenomenon. Just labeled differently in the Pacific, in the Atlantic & Caribbean, or in the Indian oceans respectively. Why? Tradition and inertia. Training the pubic to use new terms is hard slow work nobody wants to take on.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [December 12, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricane-huron-1996/1025589/7 "2025-12-12T14:39:24Z")
Two reasons- one is the regional naming that @LSLguy points out.
Second, it wasn’t _quite_ a hurricane based on the wind speed, but rather whatever the northern equivalent of a tropical storm would have been. As such things go, it was kind of puny.