MAKES ME SMART

Australians used to name their hurricanes after politicians they disliked

This tradition is said to have been started by a meteorologist by the name of Clement Wragge, who is often considered to be the father of modern meteorology. „Inclement“ Wragge, as he was often called, was the first person to do real weather forecasting „down under“. He was very outspoken and expressed his disapproval for certain politicians by naming tropical cyclones after them in his forecasts! This also marks the first time that names were used to classify weather systems.

Starting in 1953, the United States began naming tropical storms, which initially were all named after women. They later caved into pressure from feminists groups in 1979 to use men’s names as well. Currently, the duty of naming hurricanes and tropical storms is given to the World Meteorological Organization, an agency of the United Nations. The current system uses an alphabetical list. There is a storm name chosen for each letter of the alphabet, and as hurricane season progresses they go from an „A“ name to a „B“ name and so on. The WMO has 4 lists and reuses a list of names every 4 years. The more famous storm names are retired from their respective lists (thus, there was no „Tropical Storm Katrina“ in 2009).