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

 

[jbriggs444]

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.

Hurricanes can spawn tornadoes.

 

[DaveC426913]

Hurricanes can spawn tornadoes.

True.

Likewise, hens can spawn eggs, but no one would confuse an egg and a hen. (Hm. Not the best analogy, since an egg as a good chance of growing into a hen.)

Likewise, discarded cigarette butts can spawn wildfires, but no on would ever confuse the two. (Hm. Still problematic. There is a middle ground between the two - a cig heater can grow into a smouldering pile, then into a wildfire.)

What phenomenon can spawn things that won't grow into itself?

 

[BillTre]

What phenomenon can spawn things that won't grow into itself?

An energy imbalance can spawn the formation of dissipate structures. These would include tornadoes and hurricanes among other things.

 

[hutchphd]

Hurricanes can spawn tornadoes.

And larger conic tornadoes often furcate into a Devil's dance of tornadoes at the tip. Whenever the sirens go off I have a movie of those in my head. I am not sure that all the spawn co-rotate but my guess is yes. Perhaps I can find an example.

 

[Baluncore]

Whenever the sirens go off I have a movie of those in my head.

Are you saying that tornadoes are spawned, attracted, and strengthened by the warning sirens, in the same way that fog horns thicken the fog?

 

[hutchphd]

Absolutely. Those sirens need to be quieter. They are really annoying.

 

[JT Smith]

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.

I was thinking the same thing, that although that map includes where I live I've never heard of one here or thought it remotely possible. But when I did a web search I discovered that my knowledge is incomplete. They have occurred here historically.

 

[256bits]

The water spout be not left out of twisty things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterspout

and the dust devil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_devil

 

[emeritus]

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.

The proper scientific name for all three is "Tropical Cyclone" and known as TCs. That is what they are called in many parts of the world. But traditional 19th-century names persist in East Asia and North America.

 

[BWV]

never would have assumed other than a superficial connection between hurricanes and tornados, but small, thunderstorm-sized rotations called mesocyclones spawn tornados and in some cases these can go offshore and grow into proper hurricanes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesocyclone

A mesocyclone is a meso-gamma mesoscale (or storm scale) region of rotation (vortex), typically around 2 to 6 mi (3.2 to 9.7 km) in diameter, most often noticed on radar within thunderstorms. In the Northern Hemisphere, it is usually located in the right rear flank (back edge with respect to direction of movement) of a supercell, or often on the eastern, or leading, flank of a high-precipitation variety of supercell. The area overlaid by a mesocyclone’s circulation may be several miles (km) wide, but substantially larger than any tornado that may develop within it, and it is within mesocyclones that intense tornadoes form.

A mesoscale convective vortex (MCV), also known as a mesoscale vorticity center or Neddy eddy,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesocyclone#cite_note-cimss-13"><span>[</span>13<span>]</span></a> is a mesocyclone within a mesoscale convective system (MCS) that pulls winds into a circling pattern, or vortex, at the mid levels of the troposphere and is normally associated with anticyclonic outflow aloft, with a region of aeronautically troublesome wind shear between the upper and lower air. With a core only 30 to 60 miles (48 to 97 km) wide and 1 to 3 miles (1.6 to 4.8 km) deep, an MCV is often overlooked in standard weather maps. MCVs can persist for up to two days after its parent mesoscale convective system has dissipated.

The orphaned MCV can become the seed of the next thunderstorm outbreak. An MCV that moves into tropical waters, such as the Gulf of Mexico, can serve as the nucleus for a tropical cyclone. An example of this was Hurricane Barry in 2019. MCVs can produce very large wind storms; sometimes winds can reach over 100 miles per hour (160 km/h). The May 2009 Southern Midwest Derecho was an extreme progressive derecho and mesoscale convective vortex event that struck southeastern Kansas, southern Missouri, and southwestern Illinois on 8 May 2009.

 

[JT Smith]

Is it true that hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons all have different definitions as to their sustained wind speeds?

I read on wikipedia that for a hurricane must be 75mph (119km/h), for a typhoon it is 81mph (130km/h), and for a cyclone it is 40mph (65km/h). But "Standards vary from basin to basin". There is also some minor difference in how long the winds must be measured at that speed to qualify (1, 3, or 10 minutes).

Is this true in practice? Can a typhoon be substantially weaker than what the minimum strength of a hurricane is?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_hurricane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon