Hurricane Names May Turn to Greek Alphabet

Whether it was a sense of fun or some more practical consideration, the National Weather Service in the US decided to start naming tropical storms and hurricanes in 1953. They go in alphabetical order, and in 1979, men’s names were added to the list in a fit of sexual political correctness. But a naming injustice persists. If 22 tropical storms happen in a single year, storm number 22 is named Alpha. Yet there are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Q, U, X, Y, and Z are left out. That hardly seems fair.

The pretext for this injustice is the lack of names that begin with those letters. This will come as a surprise to musician Quincy Jones, Bond Girl Ursula Andress, Congressman Xavier Becerra, artist and Beatlewife Yoko Ono, and football players Zachary Dixon and Zachary Hilton. Besides, 1933 is the only year on record in which there were 21 storms; others had fewer. Meaning that X (Xerxes, Xavier, Xenophon), Y (Yolanda, Yoko, Yasmin) and Z (Zeno, Zachary, Zeke – OK that’s short for Ezekiel so it’s not really a Z) haven’t been necessary anyway.

And there is another problem with adopting Greek letters. The list of names covers six years and rotates at the beginning of every seventh year. However, if there is a particularly bad storm, it’s name is removed. It’s sort of like an athlete's number being retired after a great career. There’s no New York Yankee #3 because that’s forever Babe Ruth’s, and there’s never going to another Hurricane Katrina (one prays).

So, what happens if the Gulf gets storm #22, and Hurricane Alpha hits Miami as a category 5 and lifts that unpleasant and over-rated city from the map? Andrew is off the list after the 1992 hurricane that killed 23 Floridians (and three in the Bahamas) and cost $26.5 billion. Suppose Hurricane Alpha tops that? Alpha gets retired, and what takes its place? Does storm #22 thereafter become storm Beta? This is a rather sloppy taxonomy.

No, far better to stick to the 26 letters of the English alphabet, and use all of them. And should global warming make hurricanes more common, the meteorologists should consider giving storms surnames; just as mathematicians just place value to distinguish between tens and hundreds. No surname for the first 26 storms (like Cher, or Prince), and the next 26 get a surname starting with A, the next 26 a surname with B and so on. That would allow for a total of 702 (26 X 27 = 702) storms in the Gulf every year to have a proper name. And if the world ever has to worry about the storm after Hurricane Zebulon Zheng, more names will be the least of mankind’s problems.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home