The short answer: the ocean decides the name
A typhoon (颱風), a hurricane and a cyclone are the same weather phenomenon. According to NOAA, the only difference between a hurricane and a typhoon is where the storm occurs. All three names describe a tropical cyclone: in the North Atlantic and the central and eastern North Pacific the storms are hurricanes, in the northwestern Pacific they are typhoons, and in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean forecasters use the generic term tropical cyclone.
Intensity thresholds, however, vary from agency to agency. NOAA classifies storms with maximum sustained winds of 74 miles per hour or more as hurricanes, typhoons or cyclones. The World Meteorological Organization labels any system with maximum winds near the center of 33 m/s or more a typhoon (TY). And the Korea Meteorological Administration will report intensity on a numbered scale starting with Nokaen, the first typhoon of 2026. One storm, in other words, can be described quite differently depending on whose standard the writer followed.
Regional names and the origin of the word "typhoon": what NOAA's explainer says
The tropical cyclone explainer from NOAA's National Ocean Service compares the two names. On the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon, the page states: "The only difference between a hurricane and a typhoon is the location where the storm occurs." That sentence is quoted from the English original. The same page treats tropical cyclone as the umbrella term — a rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that originates over tropical or subtropical waters and has a closed low-level circulation.
The names split along regional lines. NOAA uses hurricane for the North Atlantic and the central and eastern North Pacific, while the same kind of disturbance becomes a typhoon when it forms in the northwestern Pacific. In the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, the generic term tropical cyclone applies regardless of wind strength. The KMA describes the same division: typhoons in the northwestern Pacific, hurricanes in North and Central America, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean and the Southern Hemisphere.
The KMA's explainer also traces the origin of the Korean word for typhoon, which it says first appeared in "Fifty Years of Meteorological Annals (氣像年報)", a compilation of weather observations from 1904 to 1954. The earliest known Chinese use of the character 颱 comes from the "Local Customs (土風志)" chapter in volume 56 of the Fujian Tongzhi (福建通志), compiled in 1634. In Europe, the English word "typhoon" appears in a British text from 1588, and the French form "typhon" was used in 1504.
74 mph and 17 m/s: the thresholds used by NOAA, the WMO and the JMA
NOAA sorts the stages of development by wind. A tropical depression becomes a tropical storm once its maximum sustained winds reach 39 miles per hour, and at 74 miles per hour or more the system is classified as a hurricane, a typhoon or a cyclone. Which of those three names it takes depends on where in the world it formed.
The WMO's categories are set in metric units. According to the KMA, the WMO treats maximum winds near the center of 33 m/s or more as a typhoon (TY); winds of 25–32 m/s make a severe tropical storm (STS), 17–24 m/s a tropical storm (TS), and anything below 17 m/s a tropical depression (TD). Korea and Japan, for their part, call every tropical cyclone with maximum winds of 17 m/s or more a typhoon. The KMA's table lists 17–24 m/s alongside 34–47 kt and notes that 1 m/s equals about 1.94 kt.
The Japan Meteorological Agency works in knots, defining a TS as a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of at least 34 knots and less than 48 knots. When the units differ, the same wind can end up being written as a different number.
KMA intensity grades: a numbered scale starting with Typhoon Nokaen in 2026
The way the KMA labels typhoon intensity is changing. The agency divides intensity into "-," "moderate," "strong," "very strong" and "super strong," but starting with Nokaen, the first typhoon of 2026, it will report a numbered grade instead. On that scale, grade 1 covers maximum winds of 17 m/s (61 km/h, 34 kt) or more but less than 25 m/s (90 km/h, 48 kt), and grade 5 covers maximum winds of 54 m/s (194 km/h, 105 kt) or more.
Size reporting has already changed. Under its revised typhoon information service, the KMA has published strong-wind radius and storm radius figures instead of size categories since 15 May 2020. The strong-wind radius is the distance from the center of the typhoon out to where winds blow at 15 m/s or more; the storm radius, the distance out to where they blow at 25 m/s or more. Together, the two radii can be taken as a gauge of how far a typhoon's effects reach.
Saffir-Simpson versus Australia's categories: a point-by-point comparison
The United States and Australia each use their own scale. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, from NOAA's National Hurricane Center, is a 1-to-5 rating based solely on maximum sustained wind speed, and it does not account for other hazards such as storm surge, flooding rain and tornadoes. All hurricanes produce life-threatening winds, but those rated category 3 and above are called "major hurricanes." The same document notes that the term "super typhoon" is used for tropical cyclones in the northwestern Pacific with sustained winds above 150 miles per hour.
Set the two systems side by side and the differences come into view. Both are judged on wind: the Saffir-Simpson scale looks only at maximum sustained wind speed, while Australia's Bureau of Meteorology bases its categories on maximum mean wind speed. The bureau rates tropical cyclone intensity from 1 (weakest) to 5 (strongest), and it too notes that the rating does not indicate the severity of other hazards.
Start at the bottom of each scale. Saffir-Simpson category 1 covers sustained winds of 74–95 miles per hour (119–153 km/h), while Australia's category 1 covers maximum mean winds of 63–88 km/h. At the top, Saffir-Simpson category 5 covers sustained winds of 157 miles per hour (252 km/h) or more, and Australia's category 5 means maximum mean winds above 200 km/h with strongest gusts above 279 km/h. In between, Australia's category 3 is labelled "severe" and brings strongest gusts of 165–224 km/h.
Takeaways
Typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones are all tropical cyclones, and what separates the names is the ocean where the storm forms. Intensity, by contrast, is divided up with different standards and different units: NOAA writes in miles per hour, the WMO and the KMA in metres per second, and the JMA in knots. The numbers may look unlike one another, but they can be compared if you also look at the wind value behind each threshold.
Readers can go to the original documents themselves. The KMA's typhoon explainers on its Weather Nuri site cover the intensity grades and the radius figures, while NOAA's National Ocean Service and National Hurricane Center pages cover the regional names and the Saffir-Simpson scale. The RSMC Tokyo - Typhoon Center, run by the Japan Meteorological Agency, issues tropical cyclone information every three hours within the framework of the WMO's World Weather Watch (WWW) programme. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology lists the wind speeds for each category on its tropical cyclone pages.
