November 19, 2012--What's In A Name

Thousands are still recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy and for many it will be years before their lives are fully restored. This is more than true for victims of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast in 2005.

So major storms are not to be trifled with.

Allow me, though, to trifle with one aspect of them—their names. Sandy, Katrina, Irene, Gloria, Bob, and Hugo are a few from recent years that come to mind.

It wasn’t always thus. Tropical cyclones that evolve into hurricanes used to be designated by a system of latitude-longitude, which was a great way for meteorologists to keep track of them.  Sandy, for example, when it was off the coast of North Carolina was not only “Sandy” but also had the locational designation of 27.7, -77.1.

However, once there were satellite images and computer forecasting models, people began receiving hour-to-hour storm warnings via various sources such as the Weather Channel and were able to keep track of a particular storm path. But the latitude-longitude system was confusing for the uninitiated and so in 1953 the National Weather Service began naming the storms after women.  Then, in 1979, since this was perceived as sexist (only women were stormy?) as a version of reverse affirmative action, male names were inserted to alternate with the female names.

They also began to include ethnic sounding names such as José and Teresa; but to keep my people happy there is no Izzy.

There are actually six lists of names in use for storms in the Atlantic. These lists rotate year to year. The list of this year's names will not be reused for six years. The names are recycled with one exception: storms which were so devastating that reusing the name is deemed to be inappropriate. When this happens, the name is expunged from the list and another is used to replace it.

There will never be another Hurricane Andrew, because Andrew has been replaced and the first hurricane of the season for the next six years will be either Andrea, Arthur, Ana, Alex, Arlene, or Alberto. And I’m sure there will never be another Katrina. One category 5 Katrina is more than we need.

Here's the full list of hurricane names for 2013:

Andrea
, Barry, Chantal, Dorian, Erin, Fernand, Gabrielle, Humberto, Ingrid, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Melissa, Nestor, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Tanya, Van, and Wendy.

I know a Chantal and a Melissa and the last thing I wish them is to have such a hurricane named after them. Do they or the Humbertos of the Western Hemisphere have to be in this way stigmatized?

Further, with all due respect to “Irene,” which last year hit Vermont very hard and caused billions of dollars of damage and changed many live irreparably, and now Sandy, do these gentle names have the force to designate much less carry the weight of being forever in history assigned to represent such killer storms?

So with an eye toward history—any device to get people to learn a little more about history seems like a good thing—and to use names that are for one reason or another not in common use, how about including names for storms such as—

Adolph and Benito

Caligula and Dimonah (look it up)

Erebus and Farouk . . .

You get the point. But here to fill out the lists are a few more from various literary, historical, and popular culture sources—

Attila, Genghis, Vulcan, Ares, Mars, Pluto, Circe, Medea, Claudius, Iago, Mordred, Sauron, Morgath, Voldemort, Grendel, Quilp, Uriah, Blofeld, Cruella, Hyde, Svengali, Hannibal, Barabos, Judas, Kurtz, and of course Satan.