You might have heard the terms cyclone, hurricane or even typhoon? So what’s the difference? Well they are all essentially the same thing! The only difference is where each of these storms form.
These are large scale weather systems where winds rotate inward towards a central area of low pressure. These storms are tropical in nature and are fueled by warm ocean waters and warm moist air evaporating and rising rapidly, creating an area of low pressure.
These storms are characterized by their violent winds, heavy rain and intense storm surges.
So back to why they get named differently based on where they form…
Tropical development in the Atlantic Ocean and eastern/central Pacific Ocean basin will get the label of a hurricane. What we see here in the U.S.
Now if we head into the western Pacific Ocean basin where countries like Japan, the Philippines, and China, are located, they are impacted by typhoons.
Looking at the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, their storms get the label of cyclone.
If you just hear the term Tropical Cyclone, that’s just a more general term to call these systems.
Its worth noting that any cyclone that develops in the Southern Hemisphere will have a clockwise rotation around its low pressure. While in the Northern Hemisphere these storms will spin counter-clockwise around its low pressure.
Again they all work under the same physics, it’s just where they form that dictates if it’s called a cyclone, hurricane or typhoon.
Now we are seeing some tropical development close to home that may bring some increased rainfall to the area over the next couple of days.
The National Hurricane Center has marked an area of unorganized showers and thunderstorms as Potential Tropical Cyclone One
Now what does that really mean?
The National Hurricane Center gives this label to a disturbance that is not a tropical cyclone, but will be impacting and posing a threat of tropical storm or hurricane conditions to an area within 48 hours.
Essentially it allows the Hurricane Center to start issuing watches and warnings while the system is still developing.
Then it gets its assigned number based on the total number of storms that have occurred within that basin during the season.
That’s what we are seeing here with Potential Tropical Cyclone One. It still hasn’t reached the criteria for a tropical storm, where it would get the first name in this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, “Arthur,” but it still poses a threat to land. In which we have now seen the Hurricane Center issue tropical storm watches from the mid to upper Texas coast.
If this storm’s center can stay over the waters of the Gulf then it can develop into a tropical storm, which the National Hurricane Center has forecasted it to do. Regardless if it gets a name or not, the impacts to southeast Texas stay the same. We remain with elevated rain chances for this afternoon and Wednesday.