Is it a hurricane or a tropical storm? Here’s a breakdown of extreme weather terms

Hurricane Beryl is barreling through Texas Monday after devastating parts of Mexico and the Caribbean.

The storm regained hurricane strength over the weekend as it traveled over the Gulf of Mexico. It had previously been downgraded to a tropical storm as it weakened over land.

So what’s the difference between a hurricane and a tropical storm? What about a typhoon or a cyclone?

Here is a breakdown of some commonly used weather terms and their definitions, which rely on material from the National Weather Service:

atmospheric river — Long and wide plumes of moisture that form over an ocean and flow through the sky over land.

blizzard — Wind speeds of 35 mph or more and considerable falling and/or blowing of snow with visibility of less than one-quarter mile for three or more hours.

cyclone — A storm with strong winds rotating about a moving center of low atmospheric pressure. The word is sometimes used in the United States to mean tornado and in the Indian Ocean area to mean a tropical cyclone, like a hurricane.

derecho — A widespread and usually fast-moving straight-line windstorm. It is usually more than hundreds of miles long and more than 100 miles across.

El Nino, La Nina — El Nino is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon that starts with unusually warm water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific and then changes weather worldwide. The flip side of El Nino is La Nina, which is an occasional but natural cooling of the equatorial Pacific that also changes weather worldwide.

hurricane or typhoon — A warm-core tropical cyclone in which the minimum sustained surface wind is 74 mph or more. Hurricanes are spawned in the North Atlantic and central and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Typhoons develop in the northwest