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Experience shows that the use of short, distintive
given names in written as well as spoken communications is quicker and
less subject to error than the older more cumbersome latitude-longitute
identification methods. These advantages are specially important in
exchanging detailed storm information between hundres widely scattered
stations, coastal bases, and ships at sea.
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The use of easily remembered names greatly reduces confusion when two or
more tropical storms occur at the same time. For example, one hurricane
can be moving slowly westward in the Gulf of Mexico , while at exactly
the same time anothe hurricane can be moving rapidly Northward along the
Atlantic coast. In the past, confusion and false rumors have arisen when
storm advisories broadcast from radio statio were mistaken for warning
concerning an entirely different storm located hundreds of miles away.
History of Hurricane Names
For several hundred years many hurricanes in the West Indies were named
after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane occurred. Ivan
R. Tannehill describes in his book "Hurricanes" the major tropical
storms of recorded history and mentions many hurricanes named after
saints. For example, there was "Hurricane Santa Ana" which struck Puerto
Rico with exceptional violence on July 26, 1825, and "San Felipe" (the
first) and "San Felipe" (the second) which hit Puerto Rico on September
13 in both 1876 and 1928.
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Tannehill also tells of Clement Wragge, an Australian meteorologist who
began giving women's names to tropical storms before the end of the l9th
century.
An early example of the use of a woman's name for a storm was in the
novel "Storm" by George R . Stewart, published by Random House in 1941,
and since filmed by Walt Disney. During World War II this practice
became widespread in weather map discussions among forecasters,
especially Air Force and Navy meteorologists who plotted the movements
of storms over the wide expanses of the Pacific Ocean.
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In 1953, the United States abandoned as confusing a two-year old plan to
name storms by a phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie) when a new,
international phonetic alphabet was introduced. That year, this Nation's
weather services began using female names for storms.
The practice of naming hurricanes solely after women came to an end in
1978 when men's and women's names were included in the Eastern North
Pacific storm lists. In 1979, male and female names were included in
lists for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. |