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No hurricanes here. Closest was a heavy thunder/rainstorm once that made a few trees in our street fall over. It was cool to watch the one across the street from us take down half the fence there. I heard that an old man further down the street died, but it was a heart attack, not the tree that nearly hit him.

Mom had us hunkered down in the hallway. Above us was the attic door. Throughout the night it kept shaking and acting as if it wanted to be pulled upwards. A window broke in kitchen scaring the shit out of our dog who jumped the baby gate we had put up to keep him in there. And shortly after the tree fell on our house.

Mom at this point got worried and while the eye of the storm was over us, she moved us over to the neighbor's house. Which was pretty kewl since there were two kids our age over there at the time. It was like a kewl sleep over! When the storm hit again we sat there and were talking saying things like "I bet there's going to be five more storms!" (since we obviously had no idea what "eye of the storm" was or anything considering our age). I do remember when she was moving us it was even scarier with the wind being gone. To have that much wind and then for it to be THAT quiet.

I've been through Hurricane Irene last year, Hurricane Sandy this year...

and several tornadoes.

Tornadoes are way scarier. Hurricanes are kind of boring.

^ Did you catch any? :3

What is the difference between tornadoes and hurricanes? I thought they were just different words for the same thing, a storm where the wind in the center circles around very quickly.
/ignorant European

Hurricanes are bigger, live for a significant period of time, and form over the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, they carry a LOT of water. In fact, the most dangerous part (but by no means the only dangerous part) of hurricanes is the storm surge when they hit land.

Tornadoes are basically just crazy strong wind. If memory serves, they reach higher windspeeds and are much harder to predict.

A hurricane is a huge whirling storm that boosts tv news ratings and a tornado is a funnel that comes down from the sky and ruins economies in the midwestern US.

Hurricane

Tornado

So basically they are the same thing, but hurricanes are bigger/last longer/are viewed from the top instead of the side?

.

See? I was right about them being swirly things coming down from the sky.

Okay, so they are somewhat different. For someone who hasn't experienced or studied either they seem like variations of the same thing. Just like bazookas and sniper rifles are both boomsticks.

And FWIW, Dutch has words for both too, orkaan and windhoos. An orkaan is a very, very strong wind, and a windhoos is a big kind of wervelwind, i.e. a swirly wind thingy from the sky. Tornado's are those things that happen in America. They're like windhozen, except really big. As the saying goes, everything is bigger in America.

They're both swirly wind things but that's like saying rain and a bathroom shower are the same thing

Man. Must be weird having strange weather.

I think that was actually a pretty fair summary, Kimiko. Don't let them over-complicate it for you.

On that subject, here is a nice image comparison between Irene and Sandy.


Of course, size does not mean strength. Water damage is the main culprit in any event.