Marion Schoch, age 12, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada for her question:

How is a hurricane different from a cyclone?

This depends to some extent upon where it happens and also upon who happens to be talking. In any case, both hurricanes and cyclones are storms of a certain type. Both are powered by low pressure cells of light rising air, which draws a large area of winds spiraling in to the center. This weather pattern causes many large and small storms, plus most of our wet, windy spells. Weather experts may refer to any of these low pressure cells as cyclonies.

The wildest cyclones are born in the tropics    and weather experts call them tropical cyclones. Ordinary folk have different names for them, depending on where they happen. Those that sweep up from the West Indies are called hurricanes. Around the North Pacific they are called typhoons and around the Indian Ocean they are called cyclones. The tropi¬cal cyclones that bash the coast of Australia are called willy willies. To the weatherman, all these are tropical cyclones, which are grand¬daddies of the somewhat tamer cyclones.