Supercyclone

The more sudden the lifting, the more violent the precipitation. In the cyclone itself there are very strong winds. The greater the difference in temperature (and therefore pressure) between the two air masses, the stronger these winds will be. Occasionally in the springtime (and especially in the midwestern United States), two air masses of such differing temperatures will come together that a sort of supercyclone occurs.

Hurricanes are supercyclones, their rains and winds intensified far beyond those of most middle-latitude cyclones (tornadoes excepted) by the superinfusions of heat and moisture they get from moving over the ocean for days at a time. In the Atlantic, they typically are bom as tropical thunderstorms over the Sahel region of Africa, whose latitude happens to coincide with the permanent equatorial band of low pressure and rainstorms once it has shifted north for the summer.

In India, 10,000 people lost their lives in a 1998 cyclone in Gujarat; the following year as many as 50,000 died when a “supercyclone” hit Orissa.

The supercyclone was an environmentalist's worst nightmare. One of the working assumptions of restorationists is that massive reforestation can help stabilize the atmosphere while protecting the land from storm damage.