There’s a big storm called Cyclone Biparjoy forming in the Arabian Sea. It’s going to hit near the India-Pakistan border. A cyclone is a big swirling system of air that causes bad weather and storms. The winds swirl around a low-pressure area in either a clockwise or anticlockwise direction, depending on which hemisphere it’s in.
Extratropical cyclones are different – they happen outside of the tropics and have cold air at their core. They get their energy from the interaction of cold and warm air masses. They always have one or more fronts, which are weather systems that form when two different types of air masses meet. These kinds of cyclones can happen over land or ocean.
Tropical cyclones have different names depending on where they are and how strong they are. In the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the North Atlantic Ocean, and the eastern and central North Pacific Ocean they’re called hurricanes. In the western North Pacific, they’re called typhoons.
