Every year the National Hurricane Center develops a list of names to apply to possible tropical storms or hurricanes during the coming storm season. Believe it or not, there is an actual committee of the World Meteorological Organization which gets together and updates this list every year. (It would seem that they could just create an “app” for that.) Although storm names are subject to repeated use, a name will be dropped permanently if the name was used for a storm which was particularly deadly or caused extensive damage.
The official hurricane names for the 2014 storm season are as follows:
Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna, Isaias, Josephine, Kyle, Laura, Marco, Nana, Omar, Paulette, Rene, Sally, Teddy, Vicky, and Wilfred.
One has to wonder about the thought process which went into picking these names. Seriously – who wants to be talking about all the devastation from Hurricane Nana? How many times is Isaias going to be misspelled? Although they are somewhat limited by the fact that the names must (for whatever reason) be in alphabetical order, it would seem that, given the violent nature of these storms, the World Meteorological Organization could come up with more descriptive names. Hurricane Titan, Tropical Storm Thrasher – now those names ring!
Well, at least we have next year’s hurricane season. Not to spoil any surprises, but the official hurricane names for 2015 include Bill, Fred, Peter, and Sam – all names which are more associated with bowling buddies than deadly storms spewing out tornadoes.