east coast/west coast and hurricanes

Well, Pacific means "peaceful."

Cold, cold water! There are hurricanes in the Pacific, typically they spawn off the coast of Mexico and head out to sea, much as the east coast ones come from Africa. When hurricanes reach the northern Pacific and strike Japan/Asia, they are called typhoons.

Similar storms in the southern hemisphere spin in the opposite direction and are called cyclones.

I think the Gulf of Mexico allows the water currents in the Atlantic to stream right up next to the landmass as well so the storms have a lot more strength when they hit land.

Our west coast doesn't have any large landmasses jutting out into the Pacific. Go to the other side of the Pacific and their typhoons are the equeal (if not stronger) than the hurricanes we get in the Atlantic.

Don't these creatures usually wander from the warm areas of the southeast towards the northwest? I think Hawaii and Asia get typhoon for the same reason as the eastern North American coast.

that was what i was thinking, but why call them typhons and not hurricanes? just because of region and culture purhaps?

Yeah, they are all tropical cyclonic storms. There is a current which runs up the coast of South America, the Humbolt current. In the latitude in which large depressions from the Sahel and the Sahara form large tropical cyclonic events in the Atlantic, the water of the Pacific is cold. In one of the recent news reports the commentator stated that much of the surface water in the Carribean is at more than 80 degrees Flagenhaemer--at that same latitude in the Pacific, such air masses coming off the desert regions west of the northern Andes hit cold water, losing energy rather than gaining, as do the storms coming west across the mid-Atlantic.