Short answers, pulled from the story.
A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system with a low-pressure center, closed low-level circulation, strong winds, and spiraling thunderstorms. It forms over warm seas of around 27 degrees Celsius, drawing energy from the evaporation of ocean water that condenses into clouds and rain. A system is generally deemed to have formed once mean surface winds exceed 35 knots.
They are the same kind of storm under different regional names. A hurricane is a strong tropical cyclone in the Atlantic Ocean or northeastern Pacific Ocean, a typhoon occurs in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, and storms in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific are called tropical cyclones. A hurricane crossing the International Dateline westward in the Northern Hemisphere becomes a typhoon, as happened to Hurricane Genevieve in 2014.
Typhoon Tip in the northwestern Pacific Ocean in 1979 is the most intense storm on record, reaching a minimum pressure of 870 hectopascals and maximum sustained winds of 165 knots. The highest maximum sustained wind speed ever recorded was 185 knots in Hurricane Patricia in 2015, the most intense cyclone recorded in the Western Hemisphere.
The deadliest tropical cyclone on record struck Bangladesh, then known as East Pakistan, in 1970, producing a 20 foot storm surge that killed at least 300,000 people. Tropical cyclones have caused roughly 2 million deaths since the 19th century, with storm surge historically responsible for 90 percent of those deaths.
Climate change increases rainfall during tropical cyclones with high confidence and raises the proportion and peak wind speeds of intense storms. Warmer air holds more water vapor, about 7 percent more per 1 degree Celsius of warming under the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. Between 1979 and 2017 the share of Category 3 and stronger storms increased globally, most clearly in the North Atlantic and Southern Indian Ocean.
Tropical cyclones are tracked by weather satellites at quarter-hour to half-hour intervals, by land-based Doppler radar near landfall, and by reconnaissance aircraft that fly through the storm and release GPS dropsondes. The Dvorak technique, developed by Vernon Dvorak in the 1970s, uses satellite imagery to assess intensity. Forecasters predict storm tracks well but remain less skillful at predicting intensity.