TROPICAL CYCLONE
You may have thought of a cyclone as being always a violent windstorm. Meterologists use this term for any low-pressure area. The furious, destructive disturbance (called a typhoon in the Orient, and a hurricane in the West Indies) is referred to sometimes by weather experts as a tropical cyclone. Fully developed, the tropical cyclone consists of a well-defined area, more or less circular in shape, which the atmospheric pressure diminishes rapidly on all sides toward the center.
Within this area the winds blow with great force. Rainfall is very heavy, especially toward the center. The motion of the air suggests on a gigantic scale the path followed by air in a whirlwind or water in a waterspout. Winds circulate counterclockwise around the center in the northern hemisphere, clockwise in southern hemisphere. At the center itself (the eye of the storm) the dense canopy of clouds overhang the rest of the storm a and calm or light air is seen, but sea here is usually very heavy.
Tropical cyclones occur in the North Atlantic, the North and South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. Due to the proximity of African and South American land masses the South Atlantic is free of these disturbances. The general track of a tropical cyclone in the northern hemisphere is a line running westward from the point of origin, then curving toward the north, and then recurving to the northeast. By this time it probably has reached middle latitude, and beyond this point it us loses its force and is spent.
