Why are hurricanes given human names? Why hurricanes are called female names (1 photo) Male and female names for hurricanes
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. U.S. Air Force and Navy meteorologists were 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 an alphabetical list of 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 other tropical cyclones - Pacific typhoons, storms of 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.
Events
Undoubtedly, everyone paid attention to what simple and, at times, gentle names researchers all over the world call hurricanes.
It would seem that all the names are random. Take, for example, the one that originated over the Atlantic Ocean Hurricane Earl(can be translated as Hurricane Graph), which raged last year over the Bahamas, the islands of Puerto Rico and along the East Coast of the United States.
Or Tropical Storm Fiona, which, as they say, “walked” shoulder to shoulder next to Hurricane Earl.
However, the system itself by which hurricanes and storms are assigned specific names has a long and rather complex history.
"What's in a name?!"
As reported in US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), hurricanes were once given the names of saints.
Moreover, the saint was not chosen randomly, but depending on the day on which a particular hurricane formed.
For example, this is how it appeared Hurricane Santa Ana, which arose on July 26, 1825, St. Anne's Day.
You may ask, what would scientists do if hurricanes formed, for example, on the same day, but in different years? In this case, the “younger” hurricane was assigned a serial number in addition to the name of the saint.
Eg, Hurricane San Felipe struck Puerto Rico on September 13, 1876, St. Philip's Day. Another hurricane that struck the same area also originated on September 13th. But already in 1928. A later hurricane was named Hurricane San Felipe II.
A little later, the system of naming hurricanes changed, and scientists began to use the location of the hurricane to designate it, that is, width and longitude.
However, as NOAA reported, this naming method did not catch on due to the fact that it was not always possible to accurately and unambiguously determine the coordinates of the origin of a particular hurricane.
The confusing and contradictory radio reports received on this topic sometimes required lengthy and careful study and sifting.
So the hurricane may end up “dying” nameless while scientists calculate its coordinates in order to give the natural disaster a name using this method!
Therefore, the United States of America abandoned such a system in 1951 in favor of a seemingly very simple and effective alphabetical naming method proposed by the military.
True, this method used not the usual, but the phonetic alphabet. That's when they were born Hurricanes Able, Baker and Charlie, in the names of which there was one pattern - the first letters of hurricanes corresponded to the letters of the English alphabet A, B, C.
However, as it turned out, hurricanes occurred more often than scientists came up with new ideas, and the number of tornadoes in a fairly short period of time clearly exceeded the number of letters and sounds in the English language!
To avoid confusion, weather forecasters began using people's names in 1953. Moreover, each name had to be approved by the National Hurricane Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA's National Hurricane Center).
Initially, all hurricanes were given female names. The name of the very first hurricane that was named using this method is Hurricane Maria.
This destructive natural phenomenon received such a beautiful female name in honor of the heroine of the novel "Storm", which was written by an American novelist and scholar George Rippey Stewart in 1941.
As told to the magazine "Life's Little Mysteries" National Hurricane Center representative Denis Feltgen, "in 1979, someone came up with the wise idea to use male names to refer to hurricanes and since then they have been used along with female ones"
"You call him like me!"
Nowadays, names of hurricanes are chosen in Geneva, at the headquarters World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
This specialized intergovernmental agency is responsible for overseeing six weather regions in the world, including the United States of America, which forms the fourth region.
It includes North America, South America and the Caribbean.
Especially for Atlantic tropical storms, The National Hurricane Center has created six lists of names for hurricanes, which was discussed and approved by the WMO by vote at a special meeting of the international committee.
These lists contain French, Spanish, German and English names because, according to NOAA, “the elements also strike other nations, and hurricanes are monitored, studied and recorded in many countries”.
These six lists of names are in constant rotation and new lists are approved regularly.
For example, in 2010, a list of names was approved that, according to forecasts, will be used only in 2016.
Initially, lists of hurricane names included names from A to Z (for example, among the hurricanes that raged in 1958, you can find the following names: Udele, Virgy, Wilna, Xrae, Yurith and Zorna).
According to Feltgen, the letters Q, U, X and Z are not used in the current lists due to the fact that there are simply not enough names that begin with these letters.
However, sometimes changes are also made to the currently used lists. If a storm or hurricane was particularly destructive (for example, Hurricane Katrina 2005), the WMO, by special vote, determines whether this name should be used to refer to hurricanes in the future.
If a particular name is excluded from the list, it is decided to use another name beginning with the same letter of the alphabet. This name is also carefully selected and approved by popular vote.
The names used in these lists can be as unusual as you like, or, on the contrary, well-known and familiar to everyone.
For example, the names planned for the 2010 hurricanes included names such as Gaston, Otto, Shary and Virgine.
Do all storms have names? No, only special hurricanes receive this honor! Namely, those who have the funnel rotates counterclockwise, and the wind speed inside the hurricane is at least 63 kilometers per hour.
Then this “lucky one” is assigned another name from the list of hurricane names approved for this year.
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. U.S. Air Force and Navy meteorologists were monitoring typhoons in the northwest Pacific Ocean. To avoid confusion, military meteorologists named typhoons after their wives or girlfriends. After the war, the US National Weather Service compiled an alphabetical list of 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 women's names. Subsequently, the assignment of female names to hurricanes became part of the system and was extended to other tropical cyclones - Pacific typhoons, storms of 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 off the list of meteorologists.
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. U.S. Air Force and Navy meteorologists were 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 an alphabetical list of 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 other tropical cyclones - Pacific typhoons, storms of 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.
Text by Pavel Digay
Matthew had a fair amount of fun in the 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 powerful hurricane of 1935 was called “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, 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 way of reading letters for a given language and/or organization. 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 female 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.
The 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 great heights, it condenses, releasing heat. It causes other masses of hot air to rise and condense, causing a kind of chain reaction. Meanwhile, air currents begin to rotate in a counterclockwise direction (clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere) due to the rotation of the Earth, carrying clouds of perturbation with them. 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... 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, off the coast of Australia - "willywilly", 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 lies between the East Asian coast in the west, the equator in the south, and the International 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 typhoons form from May to November.
Cyclones found in both the northern and southern parts of the Indian Ocean. On average there are 8 to 9 hurricanes per year (in the Bay of Bengal, the highest number of cyclones occurs 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 phenomena operating in the country in order to increase the level of public awareness of their danger. 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.