Cyclone or tornado?

Question

In Mauritius they tell us that a cyclone is specific to the southern hemisphere, whereas it's called a tornado in the northern hemisphere.
In Frank Baum's book of The Wizard of Oz, the author distinctly calls it a cyclone that whisks Dorothy away in her house; is this poetic licence, or are the Mauritians being possessive?

To 'John R': she was between the Atlantic and the Pacific in Kansas, USA

Answer 1

I'll try to clear up the many misconceptions in the answers given so far.

Tropical revolving storms are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific oceans; typhoons in the South China Sea (western north Pacific); and tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean and in the South Pacific. While typhoon is a name used only for northern hemisphere storms, hurricanes and tropical cyclones can occur in both hemispheres.

Technically a cyclone is any low pressure system in either hemisphere while an anticyclone is a high pressure system. Those countries that get tropical cyclones - including Mauritius and Australia - often drop the word "tropical" when describing the storms in the news. This means that tropical cyclones are called cyclones and the word cyclone is not used for anything else. Any reference to a cyclone in these countries means tropical cyclone.

Tropical revolving storms are synoptic scale systems some hundreds of kilometres across. They can last from days to weeks on occasion. They form over warm tropical oceans near but not close to the equator.

Tornadoes are small vortices that descend from severe thunderstorms. They are totally unrelated to tropical revolving storms. Severe thunderstorms are mesoscale systems and tornadoes have a diameter of tens of metres with exceptional tornadoes being hundreds of metres in diameter. They last from a few seconds to tens of minutes. They are found over land and water on all continents including Antarctica. When Baum called a tornado a cyclone he was wrong - but no more so than many of the answers given here so far.

Answer 2

Cyclone may apply as a term to any wind storm with a defined circulation. The term can be used to describe a hurricane as well as a tornado.

In Mauritius, they are referrring to what we are calling in our hemisphere a hurricane.

Therefore, the use in the Wizard of Oz is still correct as well.

Answer 3

Cyclone:
In meteorology, a cyclone is an area of low atmospheric pressure characterized by inward spiraling winds that rotate counter clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere of the Earth. Since the generic term covers a wide variety of meteorological phenomena, such as tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, and tornadoes, meteorologists rarely use it without additional qualification.

Tornado:
A tornado is a violently rotating column of air which is in contact with both a cumulonimbus (or, in rare cases, cumulus) cloud base and the surface of the earth. Tornadoes can come in many sizes, but are typically in the form of a visible condensation funnel, with the narrow end touching the earth. Often, a cloud of debris encircles the lower portion of the funnel.

In short a tornado is always also a cyclone, but a cyclone isn't always a tornado. (It has to have the ''funnel''.)

Answer 4

Your friends in Mauritius have got their facts wrong!
Cyclones are found in BOTH hemispheres and their counterparts, or opposites are called anti-cyclones. Tornados are a specific type of cyclonic weather phenomenon that is localised, and found predominantly, though not exclusively, in the USA mid-west.
Cyclones are weather systems, often hundreds of miles across, that have typically, strong winds (rotating CLOCKWISE in the southern hemisphere, and COUNTER-CLOCKWISE in the northern hemisphere), inwards to a centre of low barometric pressure. Anti-cyclones are weather systems that have high barometric pressure at the centre with typically light winds circulating slowly around it - typically with calm conditions.
Powerful storm systems in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific are called Typhoons, or if in the Tropics as Tropical Storms, and in the Atlantic and Caribbean they are called Hurricanes - all types of cyclones.
The wind direction in cyclones is governed by the rotational and gravitational influences of the Earth, and can be directly compared with the rotational direction of water passing down a plug-hole or waste outlet in your bath or wash-basin - different in each hemisphere.

Answer 5

I have to agree with what Tentofield had to say. That was a good explanation. With respect to the direction a tornado spins, and water from bathroom basins for that matter, they can spin in any direction. The reason being, unlike synoptic systems they are too small a scale and last too short a time for the Coriolis effect to have enough influence.

Answer 6

Cyclone is a large strom with lots of rian strong winds hial and sometimes lightning.
Tornado are just twister very storng wind

Answer 7

Cyclones and tornados are the same thing: they are called tornados in the Atlantic and cyclones in the Pacific.

So it depends where Dorothy was!

Answer 8

poetic licence

b/c the way that a tornado spins is clockwise (i think) and a cyclone spins counter clockwise

Answer 9

The mauritians are possessed.

Answer 10

It's just a poetic license.