Jose Is Hot

We're coming down the home stretch for the 2021 hurricane season.  With a just under a month to go until the door closes on November 30, it's been a busy year with twenty named storms, seven of which have been declared major tempests. And with apologies to John Cleese, a Storm Called Wanda has just made an appearance.  With no X, Y or Z names, that means we’re moving on to the backup list, starting with Adria and Braylen: heaven help us all if we make it all the way to Will.

The quaint custom of naming Atlantic storms began in 1950 by the then US Weather Bureau. It originally followed the military radio alphabet of Able, Baker and Charlie. Then in 1953 they changed to a list of women's names, following a World War II custom wherein U.S. Army Air Corp and Navy meteorologists named Pacific cyclones after girlfriends and wives. That in itself was a practice inspired by "Storm," a 1941 novel in which a junior meteorologist names one system "Maria" after a former girlfriend. And even that had roots: reportedly, the first use of a proper name for a tropical cyclone was by an Australian forecaster in the early in the 20th century. He gave storms the names of political figures whom he disliked, enabling him to say publicly that a politician was "causing great distress and wandering aimlessly about the Pacific."

In 1978 in a bow to gender equity, cyclones added male names with hurricanes following in 1979. The U.S. Weather Service is the keeper of the flame for storms originating in the Atlantic, but the situation in the Pacific isn't so simple. While the World Meteorological Organization has a master list for large scale events, many countries also have their own naming schemes for storms originating in their waters. And so a hypothetical storm that was alphabetically the second of the season and originated near Brisbane, threatened Papua New Guinea, then veered to Mindanao before taking aim at Jakarta could be known as Billy-Buri-Butchoy-Bakung.

Then in 2012 The Weather Channel, sensing a national need (and a marketing opportunity) stepped into a perceived void, and started naming winter storms. The argument was that "President's Day Storm" and "Snowmageddon" were local monikers, and didn't convey the systematic nature of a cold event. In a press release they said it would "make communication and information sharing much easier, especially in the era of social media. For example, hash tagging a storm based on its name will provide an easy way to gather all of the latest information on an impending high-impact weather system." This according to their Winter Weather Expert at the time, Tim Nizol (Twitter bio: I love 4 seasons but snow is my passion).

But while hurricanes get the headlines and blizzards make for great video, heat waves actually are far more dangerous. Studies have shown that extreme heat kills more people than either of the other two types of weather events. For example, the Great Blizzard of 1888 pummeled the East Coast with 40+ inches of snow, shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and killed 400. Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest storms on record, devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005 and killed 1836. Contrast that with a 2003 three-week heat wave that broiled Europe with temperatures consistently at or above 100 Fahrenheit. It killed an estimated 70,000 people, with 14,803 perishing in Paris alone.

That's part of what drove Seville, Spain to announce that they will be the first city to start naming heatwaves this coming year. Mayor Juan Espadas said, "Seville and Andalusia are territories that are particularly threatened by the consequences of climate change. Naming heatwaves will help citizens know the level of risk, the level of intensity, so that they will know how to face them."

The commission in charge has created a working group to come up with criteria for classification, as well as a list of names once the mercury starts to climb. Expect the details in time for the summer season. But once it starts be prepared that the next time you hear that "Jose is hot" it will have less to do with his six-pack abs and more to do with his temperature.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is thinking of naming his naps. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.