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Oct 1, 2020 · Hurricanes are categorized according to the speed of their maximum sustained winds. The scale used for this purpose, called the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, was developed in 1971 by...
In the ancient Mediterranean world, the classical compass winds were names for the points of geographic direction and orientation, in association with the winds as conceived of by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Jan 22, 2018 · Wind may be an elegant mood-setter or a furious early warning of a dangerous storm. Although few people give much thought to wind — unless it’s threatening — those rivers of moving air drive the weather in ways that rule our environment. There are many different types of wind. Each forms in different ways.
- Blizzard
- Bomb Cyclone
- Derecho
- Dust Devil
- Dust Storm
- Firestorm
- Gale
- Hailstorm
- Hypercane
- Ice Storm
First up on our list of the different types of storms is the blizzard. If you live in a cold environment, chances are pretty darn high that you’ve experienced one of these storms before. Known for their frigid temperatures, high winds, and heavy snowfall, blizzards are a fact of life in many high-latitude locales. But, what exactly is a blizzard, y...
Scary as they may sound, bomb cyclones don’t actually have anything to do with bombs. Rather, a bomb cycloneis any mid-latitude cyclone (more on that in a bit) that experiences a major and rapid drop in atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure is an important metric in a storm because storms with lower pressures tend to be substantially more dest...
Derechos(pronounced “deh-REY-chos”) are a unique type of highly violent, widespread, and long-lived wind storm. These storms are normally associated with large, fast-moving severe thunderstorms as they require deep, moist convection in order to form. While the formation of a derecho is a fairly complex topic, the damaging effects of derechos are cl...
One of the smallest types of storms, dust devilsare isolated, tornado-like whirlwinds. However, While dust devils share many physical similarities to tornadoes, they are not the same thing. A dust devil, on average, will be no more than about 1.6 ft to 32 ft (0.5 m to 10 m) wide and 3,280 ft (1,000 m) tall. Although some tornadoes can be this small...
Although dust stormsand dust devils share a similar name, they actually have very little in common (besides the presence of dust, of course). In fact, while dust devils are small-scale circulating air columns, dust storms are widespread, fast-moving plumes of dust that get tossed around in arid or semi-arid areas. The vast majority of the world’s d...
As their name suggests, firestormsare a type of storm that is caused by major wildfires. Thankfully, these types of storms are fairly rare, but they can form whenever combustion in a large wildfire causes widespread air convergence at the surface of the Earth. This convergence happens as the heat of the fire causes air to rise, reducing pressure at...
A galeis technically defined as any low pressure system not associated with a tropical cyclone that forms a sustained surface wind of at least 39 mph (63 km/h) but no more than 54 mph (87 km/h). As you can see, this definition of a gale is quite vague. That’s partly because the term “gale” has long been used in nautical contexts to describe severe ...
Aptly named, hailstorms are a type of severe weather storm that produces hail. That being said, the term “hailstorm” is really more of a colloquial term for hail-producing storms than a scientific one. That’s because hail tends to form as part of a severe thunderstorm and is not generally considered to be a storm type in its own right. However, the...
If you’ve never heard of a hypercanebefore, we don’t blame you because, well, technically, hypercanes don’t quite exist—yet. A hypercane is actually a hypothetical type of storm that some researchers predict could happen if climate change trends continue along the same path that they’re going down with regards to the rapidly warming temperatures of...
Unlike the vast majority of storms on our list, ice stormsare one type of severe weather event that has nothing to do with violent winds. In fact, many ice storms have very mild winds because what makes these storms so dangerous isn’t what happens during them, but what happens after. An ice storm is essentially a type of winter storm that sees wide...
- Trade Winds. Trade winds are the dominating patterns of easterly surface winds present at the tropics in the direction of the Earth’s equator. The trade winds primarily blow from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere and from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Monsoon Winds. Monsoons are the seasonal wind in southern Asia blowing from the southwest (bringing rain) in summer and from the northeast in winter. These winds last for many months within the tropical regions.
- Polar Easterlies. The polar easterlies are also referred to as polar Hadley cells. They are the prevailing cold and dry winds that propel from the high-temperature regions of the polar heights at the south and north poles moving towards the low-pressure regions within the westerlies at high latitudes.
- The Westerlies. The Westerlies are the winds in the middle latitudes in the ranges of 35 to 65 degrees. These winds blow from the west to the east and determine the traveling directions of extratropical cyclones in a similar direction.
The short answer is that there is none. They are all organized storm systems that form over warm ocean waters, rotate around areas of low pressure, and have wind speeds of at least 74 mph (119 km per hour). The reason for the three names is that these storms are called different things in different places.
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Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hours, to global winds resulting from the difference in absorption of solar energy between the climate ...
