Why are storms called by women's names? Female cunning: why scientists named hurricanes after their mothers-in-law. Why do they need names?

Text by Pavel Digay

At the ragan, Matthew had a fair bit of fun on Caribbean Islands and the American coast. However, a frivolous tone is inappropriate here, since there were toppled billboards, torn off roofs and broken boats. People died - in Cuba, in Jamaica... In Haiti alone - more than five hundred. So “played a trick” is clearly not the right word.

There is no doubt that there would have been even more casualties if, by the time the hurricane reached the mainland, it had not become weak and exhausted. And if they had not prepared for the meeting with him, a state of emergency would have been declared in the region ahead of time; Residents of Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina were urged to “move away from the coast” if possible, in other words, they were called to evacuate.

However, what the “Monster named Matt” managed to do, as the newspapermen called him, was enough for this name - Matthew - to be forever deleted from the lists of the World Meteorological Organization, which names hurricanes. That's the rule.

Rules appear over time, and they are polished by it. Before the advent of a harmonious system for naming hurricanes, they received their names by chance, although much more often they remained nameless. But it still happened...

Sometimes the hurricane was named after the saint, on whose day he revealed himself to people in all his horror. This, for example, happened with Hurricane Santa Anna, which reached Puerto Rico on July 26, 1825, St. Anna's Day. If a hurricane appeared again on the same day - after a year, two, ten, a century, it was assigned a serial number: this is how San Felipe and San Felipe II appeared on the pages of history.

Sometimes a hurricane was named after an area that suffered more than others from the madness of the elements. One of the most significant examples is the Galveston Hurricane, which hit the city of Galveston on September 8, 1900, with wind speeds of 214 km/h.

Later, meteorologists learned to track the path of hurricanes, and the most strong hurricane 1935 was named “Pin” - “by association”. But since it was not the first whose form of development resembled an object of tailor’s craft, it was numbered as No. 4.

The need to establish, if not control, then accounting for natural disasters led to the fact that hurricanes began to be assigned four-digit numbers: the first two digits are the year (or rather, the last two digits of the year, because we are talking about the 20th century), the second pair of digits is the serial number for this year. They also tried to name hurricanes based on geographic coordinates.

All these methods, however, were not very convenient, but for the time being it was not possible to come up with anything better. What helped, oddly enough, was the war, the essence of which was actually destruction, not creation. And yet... American pilots flying over the Pacific Ocean began to call the typhoons that threatened them after the names of their wives and girlfriends. They did this not so much out of love for them, but rather out of necessity - to avoid confusion in the radiograms, and besides, it shortened the text of the broadcasts, which was also useful, sometimes vital.

The experience of American pilots was in demand in 1950, when it was decided to give proper names to all storms whose wind speed on the Beaufort scale exceeds 64 knots, that is, hurricanes*.

(* To be fair, it should be noted that at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Australian meteorologist Clement Ragg began to assign names to natural disasters... those parliamentarians who refused to vote for the provision of loans for meteorological research, but this did not have much effect on them...)

But it is only partially in demand, since instead of women’s names it was decided to use the phonetic alphabet, which was used in radio communications by the American military. Accordingly, the first hurricanes that appeared after this reform received the names Able, Baker, Charlie**.

(** The phonetic alphabet is a standardized alphabet for of this language and/or organizing the way letters are read. If suddenly someone decided to use the Old Church Slavonic phonetic alphabet to name natural disasters, then hurricanes would be called Az, Buki, Vedi...)

However, the alphabet is not endless, and this did not eliminate the confusion - there were too many “Charlie” and “Able” on the air. And that’s when they remembered women’s names. The idea is really wonderful - there are many of them, they are short, they are easily perceived and stored in memory. In general, what you need.

The new system debuted in 1953, initially in the vast Atlantic. For this reason, English, German, Spanish and French female names were included in the lists. One for each letter of the Latin alphabet... Although, no, not for each: it was decided not to use the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z - female names for these letters are not very simple and not very euphonious, that is, they do not meet the requirements for them requirements. So there are 21 names left on the list. Accordingly, the first hurricane of the season will necessarily begin with the letter A, the second with the letter B, and so on. It is easy to calculate that the same hurricane “Matthew” is the thirteenth on the list of 2016, and the fourteenth will begin with the letter N.

Sorry, but is Matthew a girl's name? Of course not. The explanation here is simple: undivided female dominance in this area continued until 1979, when, on the initiative of meteorologists in Oceania, the World Meteorological Organization expanded the “hurricane list” to include male names- they began to alternate with women's ones.

This decision turned out to be doubly successful, because the lists needed to be replenished, and difficulties began to arise with the choice of female names. Firstly, not one name was required, but six, because the “hurricane lists” were created six years in advance, and at the end of the cycle everything starts all over again. And secondly (and this is the main thing!), some names were crossed off the lists and needed replacement.

Yes, the list of names is not dogma. If a name falls out of widespread use, it may be replaced by another. But more often the reason is different. If a hurricane had catastrophic consequences, then its name remains forever in history and is never used again. For example, none of them will anymore bear the name Katrina - after the 2005 hurricane that almost destroyed St. Louis. There will be no Hurricane Irene in the future - after the 2011 hurricane, which caused several dozen deaths. After 2012, Sandy's name disappeared from the list. This year has crossed out Matthew...

Even if not all the names were used in a given year, the next year begins with a new list, again with a name starting with the letter A. A reasonable question arises: what if there are fewer hurricanes than 21, and if there are more, then what? In this case (this actually happened in 2005), the letters of the Greek alphabet are used: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on.

Be that as it may, the “Atlantic” example showed its viability, and a similar naming approach was used for other zones where hurricanes form - for the Pacific and Indian Oceans, for the Timor Sea, for the northwestern coast of Australia. However, what is worth saying here is that there was no blind copying about the approach.

The Japanese, for example, categorically refused to give typhoons female names. They consider women to be gentle, peaceful, obedient creatures, in short, not at all like typhoons. That's why they give typhoons names of animals, flowers, trees, and even foods.

In the north of the Indian Ocean, for reasons of tolerance, lists are formed not on the basis of the letters of the alphabet, but on the principle of “one name for each country in the region,” and cyclones that do not leave the equatorial latitudes are completely left unnamed.

Rotation of names in different regions also has differences: in some places a three-year cycle is adopted, and in others the names go in a circle without reference to years - having given the last name from the list, meteorologists simply return to the beginning of the list.

But let's agree - all this is particular. The principle remains unchanged: a real hurricane must have a name! To make it clear who to fear and whom to curse.

Women's names are worse
Worse than? Than men's. At least when it comes to hurricanes. This was proven by psychologists from the University of Illinois (USA). At first they were at a dead end: on the one hand, the name of a hurricane has nothing to do with its intensity, it is assigned automatically, according to the approved list; on the other hand, the number of casualties and material damage is always higher for hurricanes with female names, and this pattern persists even in cases where the “male” hurricane is noticeably more powerful than the “female” one. Further research clarified the matter. It turns out that female names for natural disasters evoke less fear in people compared to male ones, so people are less trusting, for example, of calls to evacuate from dangerous areas, which leads to an increase in the number of victims.

How do they appear?
Hurricanes form over the oceans when water temperatures exceed 26 degrees Celsius. A hurricane is created by perturbation, which occurs when warm, moist air that comes into contact with the sea begins to rise. Having reached high altitudes, it condenses, releasing heat. It causes other masses of hot air to rise and condense, causing a kind of chain reaction. Meanwhile, the air flows begin to rotate in a counterclockwise direction (clockwise - in Southern Hemisphere) due to the rotation of the Earth, dragging along the clouds of perturbation. When the wind speed reaches 130 km/h, it is already a hurricane. Hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the rotation of the Earth, move westward (from Africa towards America) at a speed that initially does not exceed 20-25 km/h.

What's in his name...
Hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones... This natural phenomena of the same order, similar in their characteristics. Hurricane-like storms in Atlantic Ocean are called hurricanes Pacific Ocean- typhoons, in Indian Ocean- cyclones, off the coast of Australia - “williwilly”, in Oceania - “willivaw”, and in the Philippines - “baguio”.
Hurricane- a distorted name of the god of fear Huracan among the South American Quiche Indians. In the Atlantic, hurricane season begins in June and continues until November. The seasonal norm is the formation of 12 storms, of which six become hurricanes, including three very strong ones.
Typhoon- from the Chinese “tai fung” or “tai feng”, which means “big wind”. The typhoon activity zone is between the coasts East Asia in the west, the equator in the south and the date line in the east. On average, there are about 30 typhoons per year, most of which develop to the hurricane stage, the rest reach the tropical storm stage. Most of Typhoons are formed from May to November.
Cyclones found in both northern and southern parts Indian Ocean. On average there are 8 to 9 hurricanes per year (in the Bay of Bengal greatest number Cyclones occur in May and October, while the minimum number occurs in July and February.

Russian variant
In October 2015, the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia decided to give proper names to cyclones, anticyclones and other dangerous weather events, operating throughout the country to raise public awareness of their dangers. In this our meteorologists have followed the example of the United States, Great Britain, Ireland and Germany. At the same time, it was agreed that the naming procedure would be integrated with the European and Far Eastern ones, that is, if a cyclone moves through Europe and already has a name, it will not change, the same with the arrival of a typhoon in Primorye or the Kuril Islands.
A popular vote was announced. Several hundred proposals were received - for 25 letters, it was decided to use that many. The final selection was made by meteorologists and linguists, and the choice was determined not by the popularity of the name or its “purely Slavic” roots, but by its dissimilarity from others and ease of memorization. Here they are: Artemy-Agniya, Bulat-Bella, Vera-Vitus, Gleb-Galina, Daria -Daniil, Egor-Elena, Zhanna-Zhdan, Zakhar-Zara, Inga-Ivan, Kirill-Karina, Lydia-Lev, Matvey-Maria, Nina-Nestor, Oscar-Oksana, Polina-Peter, Rinat-Rosa, Snezhana-Severin , Timur-Tamara, Ondine-Ustin, Fadey-Faina, Kharita-Khariton, Caesar-Cheslava, Elina-Eldar, Yuri-Yuliana, Yana-Yaroslav.
Already in December 2015, the Russian list “debuted” - the name Artemy was given to a whirlwind that brought winds of more than 25 m/s and heavy precipitation to Crimea and Krasnodar.

Every year hundreds of tornadoes, typhoons, tornadoes and hurricanes sweep across the planet. And on television or radio, we often come across alarming messages telling us that a natural disaster is raging somewhere on the planet. Reporters always call hurricanes and typhoons by female names. Where did this tradition come from? We will try to figure this out.

Hurricanes are usually given names. This is done so as not to confuse them, especially when several tropical cyclones are active in the same area of ​​the world, so that there are no misunderstandings in weather forecasting, in the issuance of storm alerts and warnings.

Before the first system for naming hurricanes, hurricanes received their names haphazardly and randomly. Sometimes a hurricane was named after the saint on whose day the disaster occurred. For example, Hurricane Santa Anna got its name, which reached the city of Puerto Rico on July 26, 1825, St. Anna. The name could be given to the area that suffered the most from the disaster. Sometimes the name was determined by the very form of development of the hurricane. Thus, for example, hurricane “Pin” No. 4 got its name in 1935, the shape of its trajectory resembled the mentioned object.

The original method of naming hurricanes, invented by Australian meteorologist Clement Wragg, is known: he named typhoons after members of parliament who refused to vote on the allocation of loans for meteorological research.

The names of cyclones became widespread during the Second World War. Air force meteorologists naval forces The United States was monitoring typhoons in the northwest Pacific Ocean. To avoid confusion, military meteorologists named typhoons after their wives or mothers-in-law. After the war, the US National Weather Service compiled alphabetical list female names. The main idea behind this list was to use names that are short, simple and easy to remember.

By 1950, the first system in hurricane names appeared. First they chose the phonetic army alphabet, and in 1953 they decided to return to FEMALE NAMES. Subsequently, the assignment of female names to hurricanes became part of the system and was extended to others. tropical cyclones– for Pacific typhoons, storms in the Indian Ocean, Timor Sea and the north-west coast of Australia.

The naming procedure itself had to be streamlined. Thus, the first hurricane of the year began to be called a female name, starting with the first letter of the alphabet, the second - with the second, etc. The names chosen were short, easy to pronounce and easy to remember. There was a list of 84 female names for typhoons. In 1979, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), together with the US National Weather Service, expanded this list to also include male names.

Since there are several basins where hurricanes form, there are also several lists of names. For Atlantic basin hurricanes there are 6 alphabetical lists, each with 21 names, which are used for 6 consecutive years and then repeated. If there are more than 21 Atlantic hurricanes in a year, the Greek alphabet will come into play.

If a typhoon is particularly destructive, the name assigned to it is removed from the list and replaced by another. So the name KATRINA is forever crossed out from the list of meteorologists.

In the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean, names of animals, flowers, trees and even foods are reserved for typhoons: Nakri, Yufung, Kanmuri, Kopu. The Japanese refused to give female names to deadly typhoons because they consider women to be gentle and quiet creatures. And the tropical cyclones of the northern Indian Ocean remain nameless.

Naming hurricanes has been a common practice for a long time. This is done to avoid confusion, especially when several natural disasters are raging in the same area. Different male and female names help distinguish tropical cyclones in weather forecasting, storm alerts and warnings.

Background

Atmospheric anomalies began to be called by various names at the beginning of the twentieth century. Australian meteorologist Clement Rugg assigned natural disasters the names of parliamentarians who refused to vote for loans for meteorological research.

Meteorologists often used geographic coordinates to identify natural disasters. P The natural element could also be called by the name of the saint on whose day the disaster occurred. Also, until 1950, hurricanes were assigned serial four-digit names, the first two digits indicating the year, the second two the serial number of the hurricane that year. The Japanese still use their hurricane naming system. They name Pacific Northwest hurricanes after animals, flowers, trees and foods.

System of female and male names

The modern system of naming hurricanes is associated with the habit of American military pilots. During World War II, they began naming hurricanes and typhoons after their wives and girlfriends. Meteorologists liked this idea because of its simplicity and ease of memorization. The active naming of hurricanes by female names began in 1953. The US National Hurricane Center found this practice convenient and easy to understand in news releases. Two years later it was approved international system names of hurricanes - the lists included English, Spanish and French names. Until 1979, they were only female, and then they began to assign male names to hurricanes.

Hurricane Katrina August 28, 2005. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Currently, a list of names for hurricanes and storms is created by the World Meteorological Organization. It is customary to name a tropical storm if the wind speed is more than 62.4 km/h. The storm becomes a hurricane when wind speeds reach 118.4 km/h. Each region where they are formed has its own list of names. There are six such lists in total, with 21 names in each. ABOUTThe first list is valid for one year, and after six years the first list can be used again. However, if a hurricane was catastrophic, its name is permanently removed from the list. The name of such a hurricane remains forever in history and is never used again (for example, 2005 Hurricane Katrina, 2004 Hurricanes Charlie, Frances, Jenny, etc.).

Hurricane Sandy October 29, 2012. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

The name of the hurricane is assigned to alphabetical order(Latin alphabet). The first hurricane of the year is given a name starting with the first letter of the alphabet, etc. However, if there are more than 21 hurricanes in a year, then the Greek alphabet is used, as was the case in 2005.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, typhoons, cyclones- These are natural phenomena of the same order, similar in their characteristics. Hurricane-like storms in the Atlantic Ocean are called hurricanes, in the Pacific Ocean - typhoons, in the Indian Ocean - cyclones.

Hurricane- This is a wind that twists into several spirals at high speed.

If someone gets into the epicenter of a hurricane, they will first feel strong wind, then heavy rain. When the epicenter of the hurricane moves, calm weather will occur and clear sky. After some time, heavy rain will fall again and a strong wind will blow. Only the wind will blow in the opposite direction.

Storm– very strong wind, as well as very rough seas.

Tornado (tornado) – atmospheric vortex, arising in a thundercloud and spreading down, often to the very surface of the earth, in the form of a cloud arm or trunk with a diameter of tens and hundreds of meters. This is a wind of enormous force. Waterspouts (tornadoes) most often occur in North America, up to 200 annually. Tornadoes destroy houses and engineering structures. The speed of a tornado can be 100 km/h.

Hurricane Irma continues its path of destruction to Florida. Hurricane Jose is gaining strength in the Atlantic. And Hurricane Katya is born in Gulf of Mexico. Irma, Jose, Katya? How are these energetic forces of nature given names to hurricanes?

Hurricanes are named for public safety reasons, said Claire Nullis, spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). In means mass media It has become easier to publish a storm and increase interest in warnings when the storm has a name, according to the WMO.

Why was the hurricane named Irma?

Hurricane Irma gets its name because it follows Harvey on the WMO's predetermined list of hurricanes that occur in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic Ocean.

Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive names like Irma in writing and colloquial speech faster and less error-prone than older, more cumbersome longitude-latitude identification methods. These benefits are especially important for exchange detailed information about a storm between hundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases and ships at sea.
Using easy-to-remember names greatly reduces confusion when two or more tropical storms occur simultaneously. For example, one hurricane may be moving slowly west in the Gulf of Mexico, while at the same time another hurricane may be moving rapidly north along the Atlantic coast. In the past, confusion and false rumors arose when storm warnings broadcast from radio stations were mistaken for warnings about an entirely different storm hundreds of miles away.

Where do all these names come from, and what name will come next? You probably already know that hurricane names are in alphabetical order throughout the season, but these are more structured.

The World Meteorological Organization, which is responsible for naming hurricanes and tropical storms, has six lists they go through. (In other words, they are currently using non-service names that were also used in both 2011 and 2005). They have been using this system since 1953.

Hurricane names list

List of hurricane names, for 2017 and beyond

What are the names of hurricanes?

Hurricane names have already been planned for six years in advance, including 21. But while the names more or less follow the alphabet, don't hold your breath for Hurricanes Quinn or Humberto—there aren't any names on the list that start with Q, U, X, Y or Z, because there aren't enough of them that start with those letters, according to Nullis .

In the unlikely event that there are more hurricanes in a year than predetermined names, hurricanes in this region of the world are named after greek letters: alpha, beta, gamma, etc. Storms have been called Alpha Alpha Alpha several times: in 1972, 1973 and again in 2005, although the last storm that blew up Haiti and Dominican Republic with heavy rain, was overshadowed by the devastating effects of Hurricane Wilma.

Hurricane names are removed at the request of the country's representative at the annual meetings of a WMO committee called the Regional Association Hurricane Committee. This is done when a storm has been so destructive that future use of the hurricane's name is considered unethical, according to Nullis. Katrina, Sandy and Ike - the only catastrophic Atlantic hurricanes that impacted the US - were cut from the list (below).

Hurricane names

Names of hurricanes and typhoons

But the process of naming Atlantic hurricanes hasn't always been so neat.

Beginning in 1950, storms in the region were named after the United Army/Navy phonetic alphabet — Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog — when the convention changed to use female names instead, according to Patrick Fitzpatrick, a professor of meteorology at Mississippi State University and author of Hurricanes: A Reference Guide (ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006). In the interest of gender equality, male names were added in 1979, Nullis said.

Officially, the storms are not named after specific people, but that doesn't stop people from getting upset about sharing their name with a massive storm, Nullis said.

She recalled a complaint last year from a man named Matthew who was unhappy about sharing his name with the 2016 storm that caused such havoc in Haiti. On another occasion, someone said the names weren't "tough" enough.

Others have different ideas about what to name hurricanes, including those who suggest they should be named after science fiction characters and others who suggest their own proper names, Nullis said.

There are more vindictive people who want to stamp their personal grievances on natural disasters.

"We had one lady who asked us to name a hurricane after her ex-husband"Nullis said.

As for Irma, this is the first year that the name has been used for a hurricane. Irma took the place of Irina, a name that was removed from rotation at the request of the United States in 2012. Whether the names of recent hurricanes Irma or Harvey will be removed is a decision that will be made by the regional association's Hurricane Committee at its next meeting, to be held in France in 2020.