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Since 2005, my name has been very easy to spell for people. I am able to make quite an impression at the library, bank, post office, or anywhere else that your name is required to be spoken and spelled. “My name is Katrina, like the hurricane”. It almost always elicits a chuckle and saves me from being documented in the annals of time as Katherine, Kathy, Christine, Christina, Trina, or any such variation, but it also got me to wondering: what IS the difference between a hurricane a cyclone and a typhoon.
According to the National Ocean Service, the only difference between the three terms is where they occur geographically. All three variations of these storms occur over large bodies of relatively warm water that evaporates, rises, and condenses, but their energy sources differ depending on the location of the storm. Cyclones, Hurricanes and Typhoons can get their wind and wave energy from either, the rotation of the Earth and its interaction with the airflow being brought into the centre of the storm.
Hurricanes occur in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific Oceans when as system of thunderstorms, and clouds reach a velocity of 74 miles per hour or greater. These terms, are at times interchangeable and frustrating to distinguish between.
Typhoons are tropical storms in the Northwest Pacific Ocean that reach hurricane force winds on the Beaufort Scale.
These same storms in the Southern Hemisphere or the Indian Ocean are referred to as Cyclones.
So; in summary, cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are all tropical storms created by warm ocean water evaporating, rising, and condensing into thunderstorms and clouds, but are named according to where the occur in the world.
