The same storm with different regional names. A tropical cyclone is called a typhoon in the northwest Pacific and a cyclone in the Indian Ocean and around Australia — and a hurricane in the Atlantic. Cyclone is also the general scientific term for the whole category of rotating low-pressure systems.
The core difference
Geography, not meteorology. The same phenomenon takes three names by basin:
- typhoon — northwest Pacific, west of the International Date Line
- hurricane — North Atlantic and northeast Pacific
- cyclone — Indian Ocean and South Pacific
A storm crossing the Date Line westward stops being a hurricane and becomes a typhoon without changing in any physical way.
Cyclone as the umbrella term
Cyclone is doing two jobs. As a regional name it means what a hurricane means. As a scientific term it means any large air mass rotating around a low-pressure centre, which is why tropical cyclone is the formal category covering all three names, and extratropical cyclone covers the ordinary weather systems of temperate latitudes.
The scales differ too
Each basin uses its own intensity scale, so the same wind speed can be described differently. The Atlantic uses the Saffir–Simpson categories 1 to 5; the northwest Pacific adds super typhoon for the most intense storms; Australian regions use their own five-category scale. Comparing a "category 4" across basins is therefore not always comparing like with like.
Where the words come from
Typhoon has a tangled history, with plausible roots in Chinese tai fung (great wind), Arabic and Persian tufan, and Greek Typhon, a monster of storms — the English word probably owes something to all three. Cyclone was coined in the nineteenth century from Greek for a circle or coil.
Frequently asked questions
Is a typhoon the same as a cyclone?
Yes — the same storm named by region. Typhoon in the northwest Pacific, cyclone in the Indian Ocean and around Australia, hurricane in the Atlantic.
Can one storm change its name?
Yes. A storm crossing the International Date Line westward stops being called a hurricane and becomes a typhoon, without changing physically.
Are the intensity categories the same worldwide?
No. Each basin uses its own scale, so a "category 4" in one region is not necessarily equivalent to one in another.