Richard Dixon wrote in message ...

:"Alex Stephens Jr" wrote in
:
.... I've never quite understood why North Atlantic storm systems
: don't have their own one word term, instead of wordy
: mouthfulls."extratropical cyclones", "North Atlantic storm" etc.
: "Lows", "depressions", or "storms" seem rather vague.

:Extratropical cyclones are commonly known as "windstorms" in the insurance
:industry. Names taken from the DWD's analyses. Hence "Windstorm Erwin" hit
:us over the weekend.

German has different words for the two types of "hurricane". The word
"Orkan" is used for an intense extratropical low with very strong winds like
Erwin this weekend. A genuine tropical hurricane is called "Hurrikan".
The word "orkan" is also used in Danish and appeared in the warning
published on Saturday on the Danish Met. Office website. Similarly, Dutch
has the word "orkaan".

Colin Youngs
Brussels