Which is which among Cyclone, Hurricane, and Typhoon?

[symbolipoint]

This is not something I need to know. Just that I am curious exactly why these three (or more?) different words which mean the same thing. What if anything, distinguishes each from the other? Cyclone, Hurricane, Typhoon.

I surely did look at the wikipedia articles on Cyclone and Hurricane but not so clear to me reading there.

 

[DaveC426913]

What if anything, distinguishes each from the other?

Location, location, location.

Cyclones in the Northern Atlantic, and Northern Eastern Pacific are called hurricanes.
Cyclones in the Northern, Western Pacific are called typhoons.
Cyclones in the Southern hemisphere are called cyclones.
(And cyclones in the Southern, Western semihemisphere are virtually non-existent.)

By the way, if you Google "what is the diff between hurricane cyclone and typhoon" and switch to "Images" you will get a thousand more diagrams.

 

[Baluncore]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone
"Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is called a hurricane, typhoon, tropical storm, cyclonic storm, tropical depression, or simply cyclone. A hurricane is a strong tropical cyclone that occurs in the Atlantic Ocean or northeastern Pacific Ocean. A typhoon is the same thing which occurs in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. In the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, comparable storms are referred to as "tropical cyclones"."

 

[symbolipoint]

#1 and #2, somehow when reading in wikipedia, descriptions did not feel clear. Better if I did not limit what I looked into at just wikipedia. They are ALL cyclones. Location in general tells which of the three words to choose.

 

[hutchphd]

the Southern, Western semihemisphere

That is my first encounter with this term. I will endeavor to use it daily.

 

[Hornbein]

I read that a tornado is usually a small landbased cyclone, but anticyclonic weaker counterrotating tornados are possible.

According to that map I live in a cyclone zone but I have never heard of such a thing actually occurring here or even potentially occurring. In Japan I once was required to sleep overnight in a school building due to an approaching typhoon -- schools are built exceptionally solidly to resist typhoons and earthquakes -- but we didn't experience anything.

 

[symbolipoint]

I read that a tornado is usually a small landbased cyclone, but anticyclonic weaker counterrotating tornados are possible.

According to that map I live in a cyclone zone but I have never heard of such a thing actually occurring here.

I had mostly the same thought, but had no impulse to try to find further information on it.

 

[DaveC426913]

I do not think tornados and cyclones are treated as the same phenom, differentiated merely by size.

Off the top of my head:
- cyclones are driven by the heat soaked up from oceans, tornadoes by land (though waterspouts get their energy from water)
- cyclones are formed and move at least in part due to Coriolis forces, tornadoes are not*

*although TIL, that tornadoes do have a preference for CCW rotation in the N. hemisphere


Of course, there are distinctions of scale: size, duration, power, etc. but those are quantitative, not qualitative distinctions.

Still, one would expect that - if they were the same phenomenon - we should find a continuum of events from the smallest F1 tornado right through the largest Cat 5 cyclone. But we don't. They are only at the far ends of almost any metric one might care to use - with a big gap in between. This suggests (to me) that they are independent phenomena at their source, even if, superficially, they both result in high speed, rotating winds.

I'll wager there isn't a single case in history of any event that fell in a grey area where its status as a tornado versus a cyclone is debatable.


https://www.diffen.com/difference/Cyclone_vs_Tornado