How Do Tropical Storms/Hurricanes Get Their Names?
You all probably have heard or experienced for yourselves how stressful it can be to pick names for children or even pets, right? Well, have you ever found your self wondering how tropical storms/hurricanes receive their names? How about who gets to name them? I have, so I did a little digging to find out and today will play “science guy” a bit and share what I learned.
We all know that the country, specially New Orleans continues to recover from the devastation that Hurricane Katrina brought down. At the same time we have been very fortunate that a storm from time to time ends up turning back to the ocean from which it came, sparing a coastal city or state, such as Phillippe. Everyone usually thinks of Florida first when it comes to tropical storms or hurricanes, but I’ll bet that you can recall that “Rita” and her powerful winds, rains and waves turned Houston as well as Galveston into empty shells as people fled to safety because of enough advance warning.
There are many others that I will admit I had forgotten about, such as Camille, Elena and Hortense (someone must have lost a bet with that name), but Andrew certainly remains fresh in my mind for the destruction he caused.
So, as we listen to all the coverage that these potentially deadly storms gets from all the media at our disposal that includes reporters wrapped up in rain slickers about to blown away by the winds, desperately hanging on to something so that they may deliver the story while risking their lives, I find myself wondering where do the names for these storms come from, and who names them?
The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML)’s site explained it to me this way. The first use of a proper name for a tropical cyclone was by an Australian forecaster early in the 20th century. It goes on to say that he gave tropical cyclones names after political figures he personally disliked. By doing this, naming a hurricane, this weatherman could publicly voice his his opinion, or describe a politician as “causing great distress”, or wandering aimlessly around the Pacific. I guess we’ll be seeing a Hurricane George, or perhaps a Tropical Storm Hillary in the near future although I believe those winds are already blowing strong and potentially damaging at the present moment, sorry couldn’t resist.
Flashing forward to WW II, US Army Air Corp and NAVY meteorologists named Pacific storms after their wives or girlfriends, hopefully not both at the same time, and I’m guessing that there was mixed reaction from the ladies on having this “honor” bestowed upon them, and exactly what was the motivation behind it.
After this cycle of naming, it seemed to get a bit more “boring” from 1950-1952 as tropical storms as well as hurricanes in the North Atlantic Ocean were identified by standard radio names like Able, Baker and Charlie. However, in 1953 the US Weather Bureau switched back to women’s names but decided to not leave the gentlemen out and their names, but not until 1979.
Today, choosing these names for tropical storms and hurricanes that have the potential for international disaster takes, an international group, imagine that. Names for storms are now submitted and approved by a committee of the “World Meteorological Organization.” There are six lists of names, that are recycled every six years and the only way a storm leaves the list to retirement is if it causes enough damage/havoc.
Some retired names include from 1954-Carol (appropriate as that is my mother-in-law’s name, just kidding mom), 1967- Beulah (again, some lost a bet here), 1979-David (the first male name retired), 1988-Gilbert, (Some wish Gilbert Gottfried would retire), 1990-Klaus (my name from German class in high school) 1992-Andrew (who can forget what he did to Florida) and of course the devastating storm season of 2005 that saw Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma all retired due to the severity of the destruction, and heartache they caused.
Why name these storms in the first place you might ask? The explanation I found to very simple and to make quite a bit of sense. It just makes it easier to “talk” about the storms and most importantly to warn people effectively about the most dangerous ones. There are often many different weather areas being monitored at the same time and there may even be more than one situations(storms) developing in a same area, so naming allows for distinction, avoiding confusing and possibly even panic.
One last thing that I found fairly interesting about the whole “storm naming” process. If a list ever did happen to run out of names during a storm season, which is getting ready to kick for 2007 by the way, the Greek alphabet would be utilized to cover the rest of the season, Alpha, Beta, Gamma etc. I don’t know about you, but I would quite content to never have that have to be put into play.
Well, I enjoyed playing “Science Guy” for a day, I hope it was interesting for you, and feel free to explore this on you own as I tried to “shrink” down the information I uncovered, but much more about this subject is out there that is quite fascinating. Happy Exploring!
