Thread by @althecat

For a set of names managed by an international organisation, the Atlantic Hurricane Names look incredibly Anglo-European American. Perhaps its time to review a system which has been in place with the same underlying list since. 1953 /1

This years names are:

Andrea
Barry
Chantal
Dorian
Erin
Fernand
Gabrielle
Humberto
Imelda
Jerry
Karen
Lorenzo
Melissa
Nestor
Olga
Pablo
Rebekah
Sebastien
Tanya
Van
Wendy /2

The history of Atlantic Hurricane naming is summarised here nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames_his… - for hundreds of years they received the Saint's Name for their day. From 1953-1979 storms received female names only. /3

The list of names started with 126 (6 lists, 21 names each). names are retired when Hurricanes are particularly deadly. 50 were retired in the first 47 years (avg 0.94 a year), and 39 in the last 19 (avg 2.05 a year). /4

Procedures for new hurricane names are described by the @WMO here public.wmo.int/en/About-us/FA…: It seems that the names are chosen by meteorologists, need to be memorable and familiar to the people in their path. /5

The process is described as strict , is not very clearly explained. They can't be named after specific people - so no Hurricane Trump - and there is no explanation of how gender/cultural issues are addressed. /6

And the system seems to be applied more or less strictly in different places. While Eastern North Pacific Hurricanes hardly ever make landfall north of Tijuana, but often do in Central America, the naming list is still pretty Anglo-European. /7

By contrast the Central North Pacific List is very Hawaiian which makes sense, although many of their storms may have already been named in the Eastern North Pacific.

Australia's list is very Anglo Aussie (Zane, Raquel) and contains only one Aboriginal name, Kirrily. /8

In the South Pacific (Nandi and Wellington managed) the Cyclone naming list reflects the cultural mix of the region quite well. /9

In the South West Indian Ocean they take an approach through which the naming is at least transparent, naming which metereological service which proposed each name. France contributed Oscar, Tristram and Nathan; South Africa, Desmond and Walter. /10

Fairness in the picking of names is also applied in the Northern Indian Ocean. For a fairly small patch of the Indian Ocean Indonesia picks its own names. Ditto PNG. One wonders if these areas were carved out to avoid being wacked by storms with Australian names. /11

Arguably the most dangerous and busiest Typhoon ally of them all is in the North West Pacific. And there again there seems to be a rule that each contributing nation in the region gets the same number of names. Including the U.S. /12

The impact of the post war colonial hangover in all this is pretty obvious. The strict part of the @WMO naming system is far more obvius in Asia than in the Angloshpere - only having one Aboriginal name in the list is poor. /13

P.S. Naming cyclones in alphabetical order is a residue of a discarded American Military plan in the Atlantic to name them by the phonetic alphabet. Only in the Northern Indian Ocean has the alphabetical bias in naming been removed.

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