Welcome to You Ask Andy

Richard Gorman, age 13, of Stratford, Conn., for his question:

How does a hurricane differ from a typhoon?

When weathermen discuss hurricanes among themselves, chances are they call them tropical cyclones. Storms of this sort blow up and follow certain paths over the face of the earth and, wherever they rage, people have their own names for them. Those that sweep in from the West Indies and often rip into Central and North America are called hurricanes. Those that rage through the western Pacific are called typhoons. Apart from their names, there is very little difference between a hurricane and typhoon.

The people of the Philippines are in a tropical cyclone path and they call such a storm a baguio. When a storm of this sort rages up the Indian  Ocean it is called a cyclone, There is another of these storm paths off the northwest shores of Australia and there the people call their tropical cyclones Willy Willies.

In North America, we are most interested in the tropical cyclones called hurricanes which sweep in from the West Indies. Most of these hurricanes curve north and east before striking the land and finally peter out over the Atlantic Ocean. But every year a certain number of them strike inland before turning north, A hurricane wears itself out faster as it rages over the land. As a rule, those that come inland reach no further than the Gulf States or as far north as the Carolinas. But once in a while, a howling hurricane rages right up into New England.

A tropical cyclone, no matter what its local name, is born in the tropics and its raging winds circulate in a spiral, or cyclone system. The entire storm, usually about 400 miles wide, is shaped like a doughnut ‑with a hole in the middle. The bulk of the hurricane is a mass of raging wind and storm clouds spiralling faster and faster towards the center. At the center is the eye of the hurricane, a circle of clear skies 12 to 20 miles wide, ‑  ‑. Here is a mass of light, swift rising air, a region of calm.

Our hurricanes are born between five and 15 degrees north of the equator, off the coast of Africa perhaps near the Cape Verde Islands. They hatch in the summertime, when the northeast trade winds tend to swirl up north of the equator and tangle with the southeast trade winds. Such a conflict sets up a circling eddy in the atmosphere. The young hurricane travels westward on the trade winds, developing strength as it goes. By the time it reaches Bermuda it is a raging monster, with winds of 75 miles an hour or more.

By now all the storm warnings are out and bravo weathermen are flying into the heart of the storm every six hours to bring back first hand reports. The whirling monster travels at about ten miles an hour which means that the diameter of the storm takes about 40 hours to pass overhead. The typhoon, the baguio and the Willy Willy all follow the same pattern as the howling hurricane.

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