by Abby Lynne

Created on: October 30, 2008

From the devastating blow of hurricane Katrina to this year's destruction in Haiti, hurricanes are undoubtedly one of nature's most indomitable creations. The US alone averages a number of 11 tropical storms with 6 of these turning into hurricanes and 2.5 turning into major hurricanes (www.swivel.com). Known for their brutal mortality and costly destruction, hurricanes have cost up to 58 Billion USD in 2008 alone (wikipedia, 2008). Why is it then that these phenomenal events are given such simplistic names? Katrina, Josephine and Arthur are hardly fair affiliations to an insurmountable force. This article explains.

Before the first official list of names in 1953 hurricanes were named differently through out various parts of the world. The West Indies named theirs after Saints, the US used a phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie) or the year and a letter of the alphabet (1935B) and in Australia one young meteorologist even began naming hurricanes after political figures he disliked.

Eventually storms were commonly identified by their longitudinal and lateral codes. Military forces such as the Navy and Air Force along with people of the general public found that this methodology of identifying hurricanes was confusing and long winded. Hurricane co-ordinates became too complicated to communicate and wasted costly time while also confusing the public. Between storm forecasters, meteorologists and whether stations, a new naming process was proposed to help ease communication.
The National Hurricane Centre officially adopted a new solution and began naming hurricanes using women's names. Perhaps this was due to the similarity in nature of an angry storm and an angry woman. "To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power" Maya Angelou, American Poet 1928 (http://thinkexist.com.

In 1953 the first list for the Atlantic tropical storms was released and the new International Phonetic Alphabet was born. This consisted of an alphabetical order of female names that started with a corresponding letter of the alphabet. The first name starting with an A, the second name with a B, and the last name starting with a W. Letters that had uncommon names were left out such as Q, U, X, Y, and Z. Ten years later (between 1978 and 1979) they decided to add in male names and currently use a list that alternates between both male and female names. There are two separate names lists for the naming of hurricanes, one for the Atlantic and one for Eastern Pacific.

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