What is the difference between a tornado and a cyclone?

Question

What is the difference between a tornado and a cyclone?

Answer 1

I think a cyclone is similar to a hurricane.  The whole thing is a storm system and a tornado is an effect of a storm.

Answer 2

Our local weather man stated that cyclone is the Indian Ocean version of a hurricane. Tornado's happen on land.

Answer 3

Cyclones

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone

Hurricanes

http://www.livescience.com/hurricanes/

Answer 4

Simply put.

A tornado is on land.

A cyclone is at sea.

Answer 5

While both tropical cyclones and tornadoes are atmospheric vortices, they have little in common. Tornadoes have diameters on the scale of 100s of meters and are produced from a single convective storm (i.e. a thunderstorm or cumulonimbus). A tropical cyclone, however, has a diameter on the scale of 100s of *kilometers* and is comprised of several to dozens of convective storms. Additionally, while tornadoes require substantial vertical shear of the horizontal winds (i.e. change of wind speed and/or direction with height) to provide ideal conditions for tornado genesis, tropical cyclones require very low values (less than 10 m/s [20 kt, 23 mph]) of tropospheric vertical shear in order to form and grow. These vertical shear values are indicative of the horizontal temperature fields for each phenomenon: tornadoes are produced in regions of large temperature gradient, while tropical cyclones are generated in regions of near zero horizontal temperature gradient. Tornadoes are primarily an over-land phenomena as solar heating of the land surface usually contributes toward the development of the thunderstorm that spawns the vortex (though over-water tornadoes have occurred). In contrast, tropical cyclones are purely an oceanic phenomena - they die out over-land due to a loss of a moisture source. Lastly, tropical cyclones have a lifetime that is measured in days, while tornadoes typically last on the scale of minutes.