Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Names
Reason to Name Hurricanes
Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive names in
written as well as spoken communications is quicker and less subject to error
than the older, more cumbersome latitude-longitude
identification methods. These advantages are especially
important in exchanging detailed storm information between
hundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases, and ships at
sea.
The use of easily remembered names greatly reduces confusion
when two or more
tropical storms occur at the same time. For example, one hurricane can
be moving slowly westward in the Gulf of Mexico, while at exactly
the same time another hurricane can be moving rapidly northward along
the Atlantic coast. In the past, confusion and false rumors have arisen
when storm advisories broadcast from radio stations were mistaken for warnings
concerning an entirely different storm located hundreds of miles away.
History of
Hurricane Names
For several hundred years many hurricanes in the West Indies
were named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane
occurred. Ivan R. Tannehill describes in his book "Hurricanes"
the major tropical storms of recorded history and mentions many
hurricanes named after saints. For example, there was "Hurricane
Santa Ana" which struck Puerto Rico with exceptional violence on
July 26, 1825, and "San Felipe" (the first) and "San Felipe" (the
second) which hit Puerto Rico on September 13 in both 1876 and
1928.
Tannehill also tells of Clement Wragge, an Australian
meteorologist who began giving women's names to tropical storms
before the end of the l9th century.
An early example of the use of a woman's name for a storm was
in the novel "Storm" by George R. Stewart, published by Random
House in 1941, and since filmed by Walt Disney. During World War
II this practice became widespread in weather map discussions
among forecasters, especially Air Force and Navy meteorologists
who plotted the movements of storms over the wide expanses of the
Pacific Ocean.
In 1953, the United States abandoned a confusing two-year
old plan to name storms by a phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie)
when a new, international phonetic alphabet was introduced. That year,
the United States began using female names for storms.
The practice of naming hurricanes solely after women came to
an end in 1978 when men's and women's names were included in the
Eastern North Pacific storm lists. In 1979, male and female names
were included in lists for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
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