Michael Putorti, age 13, of Rotterdam, New York, for his question:

 What is meant by a typhoon?

Along our eastern seaboard we call them hurricanes. But these very same raging storms occur in several other parts of the world. Our howling hurricanes hatch around the West Indies and move westward    where they veer either into the Gulf of Mexico or north along the eastern seaboard or harmlessly out into the Atlantic. Another breeding ground is in the Pacific, between the Marshall Islands and the Philippines These huge storms rage westward across the Philippines, veer north to strike the coast of China and the islands of Japan. People in this part of the world called them typhoons, though they are the same storms as our hurricanes.

Other breeding grounds are in the Indian Ocean where people call them cyclones. Similar storms breed south of the equator and veer down to strike Australia. Here the people call them willy willies. Typhoons and cyclones, hurricanes and willy¬willies are local names for the same type of weather event. Meteorologists avoid the linguistic confusion by referring to them all as tropical cyclones.