Brewing trouble

Ever wondered why destructive hurricanes such as Ike or Katrina that devastated the eastern coast of the US in 2005, are named thus? Meteorologists, who have the privilege of naming these natural disasters, tend to use them as they believe short, distinctive names given in written as well as spoken communication are 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.
Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) based in the US. They are now maintained and updated by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organisation. The original name lists featured only women's names. In 1979, men's names were introduced and they alternate with the women's names.

Six lists are used in rotation. Thus, the 2008 list will be used again in 2014. The only time that there is a change in the list is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity.

So, after Ike, which will it be next? NHC's list has Josephine, followed by Kyle and Laura…

Information courtesy: National Hurricane Centre.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

– Shiva Kumar Thekkepat is Feature Writer, Friday