Weather language

[PrincessFiona]

Found this on a news site:"Hawaii has not been directly hit by a hurricane in 22 years, and only three times since 1950, though it has endured nearly 150 tropical cyclones in that time, according to the AP."

I thought hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons all explained the same phenomenon? (Just diff geographic locations). I'm confused as to the difference between hurricanes and tropical cyclones. Can one of our weather gurus help me?

Kris

[poky]

Found this on a news site:"Hawaii has not been directly hit by a hurricane in 22 years, and only three times since 1950, though it has endured nearly 150 tropical cyclones in that time, according to the AP."

I thought hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons all explained the same phenomenon? (Just diff geographic locations). I'm confused as to the difference between hurricanes and tropical cyclones. Can one of our weather gurus help me?

Kris

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/cyclone.html

Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are all the same weather phenomenon; we just use different names for these storms in different places. In the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, the term “hurricane” is used. The same type of disturbance in the Northwest Pacific is called a “typhoon” and “cyclones” occur in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.

The ingredients for these storms include a pre-existing weather disturbance, warm tropical oceans, moisture, and relatively light winds. If the right conditions persist long enough, they can combine to produce the violent winds, incredible waves, torrential rains, and floods we associate with this phenomenon.

In the Atlantic, hurricane season officially runs June 1 to November 30. However, while 97 percent of tropical activity occurs during this time period, there is nothing magical in these dates, and hurricanes have occurred outside of these six months.

Sounds like whoever wrote that news report doesn't know what they're talking about? At least according to NOAA

[poky]

This lays it out with actual latitude specifications:

http://weather.about.com/od/hurrican...cificcanes.htm

[poky]

A HA! I may have found the answer:

Generally speaking a cyclone is a spiralling body of air and once they reach a certain size and intensity they become designated as hurricanes or typhoons.

from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/we...a-typhoon.html

[scarlett09]

Def not a weather guru, but an aficionado. Your understanding of hurricane vs cyclone vs typhoon is correct. They are all the same thing just happening in different geographic locations. Hawaii (at least the major islands) can only be affected by hurricanes, based upon their location in the Eastern Pacific. I'm not as familiar with the exact lat/long of the rest of the island chain - they may get typhoons. But this would be very rare, based upon where typhoons like to form and how they move across the ocean.

The islands do not get tropical cyclones. That terminology is reserved for storms that form in the Indian Ocean and a small portion of the SW Pacific Ocean near Australia. It appears the AP may have confused or not had enough space to differentiate between what was referred to as "tropical cyclones" but were in fact "Kona storms." Kona storms are extratropical storms, similar to my beloved Hurricane Sandy. They develop during the winter months but are not cyclones or hurricanes. Wiki had some info about Kona storms, which I tried to summarize but my eyes started to glaze over at some of the very technical weather terms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kona_storm