# Tornadoes outside USA **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 10, 2008, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459 "2008-06-10T16:16:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/21 "2008-06-11T10:49:37Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] Perth, Washington is certainly within the U.S. as is the rest of the state. Oops, you are talking about Western Australia. Can you change that abbreviation please? It gets confusing and a number of us have been tricked by it. [/QUOTE] I believe WA is the official Australian postal abbreviation for Western Australia. There shouldn’t be any confusion. Perth is a major city; a capital in fact. If someone references Perth one should assume Australia, not a town in Washington state. If I say I’m going to London, you can bet 999 out of 1000 times I mean the one in England, not Ontario. The lesser known place needs the clarification. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/22 "2008-06-11T11:09:04Z")
[QUOTE=BwanaBob] If someone references Perth one should assume Australia, not a town in Washington state. [/QUOTE] The good folk of [Scotland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth%2C_Scotland) (if there are any… good ones, I mean 😉 ) might disagree. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/23 "2008-06-11T11:45:21Z")
How accurate are tornado counts outside the US and Europe? Could we be missing a lot of tornadoes in central Russia, for example? Also, do tornadoes ever form over the ocean? Are “waterspouts” tornadoes or are they more like dust devils? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/24 "2008-06-11T15:23:28Z")
[QUOTE=pulykamell] “Cyclone” can be colloquially used to refer to a tornado, although the technical usage (and the usage I’m more familiar with) refers to a large-scale, rotating wind-and-pressure system of which hurricanes and typhoons are types of. [/QUOTE] It’s a regional vocabulary difference. In the United States, a cyclone _is_ a tornado, period. If anyone speaks of a cyclone occurring in the United States, they’re talking about a tornado. If you’re talking about a weather event in Asia, a reference to a cyclone is what we would otherwise call a hurricane. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/25 "2008-06-11T15:27:34Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] The good folk of [Scotland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth%2C_Scotland) (if there are any… good ones, I mean 😉 ) might disagree. [/QUOTE] And then there’s Perth, Ontario. (If you go straight through the centre of the earth from Perth, Ontario, you end up in the Indian Ocean. The nearest large city is Perth, Australia. 🙂 ) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/26 "2008-06-11T15:43:09Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray] It’s a regional vocabulary difference. In the United States, a cyclone _is_ a tornado, period. If anyone speaks of a cyclone occurring in the United States, they’re talking about a tornado. [/QUOTE] I’d assume they were talking about a hurricane, or else a cyclonic storm. I’ve never lived in the Midwest, so I have no experience with tornados or anyone calling them ‘cyclones’. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/27 "2008-06-11T15:47:10Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] The good folk of [Scotland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth%2C_Scotland) (if there are any… good ones, I mean 😉 ) might disagree. [/QUOTE] It’s about the same with Boston. If you hear that, you’ll most likely think of Boston, Massachusetts first, not of [Boston, Lincolnshire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston%2C_Lincolnshire), after which all other Bostons were named. It’s different with many other examples such as Athens or Berlin or Paris or Rome, though, because all the other places of that name (of which there seem to be a few in the U.S. and elsewhere) are clearly smaller than the original ones after which they were named. It seems to be split roughly in halves in the case of Birmingham. Birmingham, Alabama is smaller than the one original in the English Midlands, but it’s still fairly large. ---
**Author:** ![awldune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@awldune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/awldune)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/28 "2008-06-11T16:54:38Z")
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.] I’d assume they were talking about a hurricane, or else a cyclonic storm. I’ve never lived in the Midwest, so I have no experience with tornados or anyone calling them ‘cyclones’. [/QUOTE] FWIW, ‘cyclones’ are tornadoes in the southeast as well. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/29 "2008-06-11T17:54:08Z")
[QUOTE=BwanaBob] I believe WA is the official Australian postal abbreviation for Western Australia. [/quote] And, on the Internets, it’s just as silly to use the official Australian postal abbreviation as it is to use official U.S. postal abbrevations. Postal abbreviations are obsolete in a global medium. > [@](#): > > There shouldn’t be any confusion. > Perth is a major city; a capital in fact. If someone references Perth one should assume Australia, not a town in Washington state. I’d assume Scotland. In any case, it was Cunctator who specified _WA_. The use of that abbreviation increased the ambiguity rather than dispelling it. A lot more people are going to assume that “WA” means “Washington” rather than “Western Australia.” If you specify “WA,” to most of us, you’re emphasizing that the city is someplace that we might not have heard of, but is in Washington state. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/30 "2008-06-11T18:46:01Z")
Didn’t the Wizard Of Oz use the term “cyclone”? ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459/31 "2008-06-11T22:18:05Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray] I’d assume Scotland. In any case, it was Cunctator who specified _WA_. The use of that abbreviation increased the ambiguity rather than dispelling it. A lot more people are going to assume that “WA” means “Washington” rather than “Western Australia.” If you specify “WA,” to most of us, you’re emphasizing that the city is someplace that we might not have heard of, but is in Washington state. [/QUOTE] My location is stated as Australia and I started my response with a quote showing that I was clearly replying to the the question about tornadoes outside the USA. The link that I gave went to an an Australian newspaper website. All pretty clear, I’d have thought. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tornadoes-outside-usa/452459.md?page=1)