As Hurricane Florence looms off the eastern US and Typhoon Mangkhut threatens the Philippines, here are some facts about monster storms and what to expect as climate change supercharges our weather.
A cyclone by any other name
Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are different names for the same type of giant tropical storms that form in oceans near the Americas and Asia.
Bringing torrential rains, high winds, storm surges, and giant waves, the storms can be deadly and wreak havoc once they make land.
At their most fearsome, these low-pressure weather fronts pack more power than the energy released by the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima.
In the Atlantic and northeast Pacific, they are known as hurricanes, while typhoon is the term used in Pacific Asia. The same weather phenomenon in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean is a cyclone.
