We’ve come across these three terms so many times in our life. A hurricane that struck some island; a cyclone which tore apart a community; a typhoon which caused unaccountable damage; and so on. But how do you differ between these three storms? Are they different types of storms? Or are they a completely different phenomenon altogether? Let’s address the issue.
Wake up call! Typhoons, cyclones, and hurricanes are the same thing. Strictly speaking, they’re all tropical storms which make news every time they’re about to make landfall. Then why do we use three different names for the same phenomenon? Well, scientists use the three names interchangeably according to the region in which the storm occurs. Again, why do they do that? The not so scientific answer is- just like that!
In the Atlantic and northern Pacific region, the storms are named after the Caribbean God of evil Hurrican. So if a tropical storm is prancing around the Atlantic and northern Pacific, you call it a hurricane. Now, moving to the northwestern Pacific, the storms are addressed as typhoons. Whereas, in the south-eastern Indian Ocean, these storms are called severe tropical cyclones. Moreover, in the northern Indian Ocean, the storms are called severe cyclonic storms and in the southwestern Indian Ocean they’re pronounced as tropical cyclones.
Now, in order to be categorized as a hurricane, typhoon, or cyclone, a storm needs to reach wind speeds of at least 119 kmph. And if a hurricane attains a speed of 179 kmph, then it is promoted to the status of an intense hurricane. Similarly, if a typhoon reaches the speed of 241 kmph, it is labelled as a super typhoon.
The blame is not on you if your head is spinning after all those definitions of a tropical storm. If you don’t excel at memorizing regions and names, your best bet would be to call it just a ‘storm’. But if you wish to be that person who’s extremely particular about storms, you must understand and memorize this short essay.
