When turbulent weather with whipping winds and heavy snow is in the forecast, meteorologists sometimes warn that a storm could “bomb out” or become a bomb cyclone. But what exactly does this mean?

Tropical Cyclone Alfred was no normal cyclone. Firstly, it moved the wrong way. Most cyclones that form in the Coral Sea move east then out to sea by the time they get as far south as Brisbane. This one began on that trajectory, then turned around.

A tropical cyclone could form in the Atlantic in the next few days and barrel toward Bermuda, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Whether the storm will track toward the Carolinas or elsewhere on the coast was too early to predict, as of ...