With today’s article I’ll be reaching into the question box for a few shorter questions that wouldn’t fill an entire article on themselves. The first one is about the difference between hurricanes and cyclones (Side note: I know I talk alot about hurricanes but with all of the questions about it and the once in a lifetime season we are having for hurricanes this year how could I possibly not talk about them) which is a lot less than you would think. So to lay out the complex and overly scientific yellow tape with names for weather phenomena here’s it boiled down. Tropical Storm/ Cyclones are the correct nomenclature for what we would call hurricanes and what the Indian and South Pacific Oceans calls Cyclones and what the North Pacific Ocean calls Typhoons. Tropical Storm/Cyclone is the world wide agreed upon name, used in scientific papers or international warnings. The next question is another one about different nomenclature with something I hadn’t heard of before, Derechos. Derechos are one of the many names for squall lines or even Blue Northers. Basically Derechos are extremely strong storms on strong fronts that have extremely strong straight line wind (wind blowing all in one direction) which is actually more dangerous than tornadoes in the US because of its ability to throw cars, blow out windows or just flatten buildings, not to mention the torrential rain they bring in a short about of time. They are more prone to happen in conjunction with large heat waves during the spring and summer, like what happened Memorial Day 2015 with the large amount of flooding and strong storms was a Derecho looking back at the radar images. While tornadoes can form in these types of storms they would usually form on the southern ends of these lines where you have the most amount of mixing of the atmosphere which could create tornadoes. Lastly we have one more question about Dust Devils (no not the vacuum cleaner) and what they are. Dust Devils, Dirt Devils, whatever you call them are all just whirlwinds, or small vertically rotating columns of air that are relatively short lived, 1-20 minutes . These types of whirlwinds are more common than you would think, you can’t see most of them because they don’t have any particles of dust or dirt in them so they are pretty much invisible. These aren’t very damaging to houses or cars, with winds up to 45 mph, but it wouldn’t be that fun for us unless you like getting sandblasted.
