What is the difference between a hurricane, a typhoon, and a cyclone?

All three words describe the same phenomenon, a tropical cyclone, meaning a rotating low-pressure system that forms over warm ocean water and sustains winds of at least 74 miles per hour. The name changes with the ocean basin. Storms in the North Atlantic and northeastern Pacific are hurricanes. Storms in the northwestern Pacific are typhoons. Storms in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific near Australia are cyclones. A storm that crossed from one basin into another would technically be renamed, which has happened.

Two related distinctions cause more confusion than the naming does. Tropical cyclone is the general category, and the storm passes through tropical depression and tropical storm stages before earning a name in the hurricane class. And a tornado is an entirely different thing: far smaller, forming from thunderstorms over land rather than warm ocean water, lasting minutes rather than days, and measured on the Enhanced Fujita scale rather than the Saffir-Simpson wind scale. The northwestern Pacific produces the most tropical cyclones of any basin and the most intense ones on record, which is a function of the enormous reservoir of warm water it has to draw on.