It is customary to give names to hurricanes to avoid misunderstandings in weather forecasting. Read about how exactly the names for the elements are chosen in the material of the Moscow 24 portal.
Where does the wind blow from
Weather anomalies began to receive names at the beginning of the 20th century, when unnamed elements made it difficult to predict the weather, since the trajectories of some of them intersected during the hurricane season. Then meteorologists began to use names for hurricanes geographical coordinates or the name of the saint on whose day the disaster occurred.
In addition, until 1950, hurricanes were assigned four-digit numbers, the first two digits of which denoted the year, the second two - serial number hurricane this year.
Giving names to hurricanes began during World War II. Members of the United States Air Force and Navy, tracking typhoons in the Pacific, gave the anomalies the names of their wives and lovers. But already in 1953 this method was officially approved. And since 1978, they began to give hurricanes male names Same.
Japan uses its own naming system for natural disasters; hurricanes are given the names of animals, flowers, trees and products: Nakri, Yufung, Kanmuri, Kopu. They abandoned the idea of giving typhoons female names, because women in Japan are considered gentle and quiet creatures.
Bad weather list
An annual list of hurricane names is maintained, which includes 21 names - by the number of all letters in English alphabet(except for the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z which are not used). The names of the anomalies are given in order: the first hurricane of the season is called by a name that begins with the letter A, the second with the letter B, and so on. One such list is for a year, and after six years, you can again apply the first list and repeat the names of hurricanes.
If the letters in the alphabet are over, which is extremely rare, then the 22nd hurricane is called already from the first letter of the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and others.
On currently The 2017 list of Atlantic Coast hurricane names is: Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Emily, Franklin, Harvey, Irma, Jose, Katya, Lee, Maria, Ophelia, Phillip, Rina, Sin, Tammy, Vince, and Whitney.
Hurricanes in retirement
If the typhoon "distinguished" and became too destructive and claimed the lives of people, then its name will not be reused, as this will remind the victims of the horror experienced. For example, the name of Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005 and literally washed away the city, or the name of Hurricane Charlie, which hit Florida in 2004, caused multi-billion dollar damage to the state and killed 16 people.
Recall that after the hurricane "Irma" on, which has already reached the maximum fifth category of power.
Maria's wind speed is 260 km/h. The hurricane is located 70 km north of the French island of Martinique,
Due to the onset of the elements, an alarm has already been declared on the island of Saint Lucia, the British and American Virgin Islands, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Antigua and Barbuda.
The hurricane season lasts in the Atlantic from early June to late November. Periodically, ocean storms turn into tornadoes. The element gets its name if the wind at the epicenter develops a speed of up to 17.4 m/s. At a wind speed of 33 m/s or more, the atmospheric phenomenon receives the status of a hurricane.
Hurricanes are given names. This is done in order not to confuse them, especially when several tropical cyclones operate in the same area of the world, so that there are no misunderstandings in weather forecasting, in issuing storm alerts and warnings.
Prior to the first naming system for hurricanes, hurricanes were given their names randomly and randomly. Sometimes the hurricane was named after the saint on whose day the disaster occurred. So, for example, the hurricane Santa Anna, which reached the city of Puerto Rico on July 26, 1825, received its name, on St. Anna. The name could be given according to the area that suffered the most from the elements. Sometimes the name was determined by the very form of development of the hurricane. So, for example, the hurricane "Pin" No. 4 got its name in 1935, the shape of the trajectory of which resembled the mentioned object.
An original method of naming hurricanes, invented by Australian meteorologist Clement Rugg, is known: he named typhoons after members of parliament who refused to vote for weather research loans.
The names of cyclones were widely used during the Second World War. US Air Force and Navy meteorologists monitored typhoons in the northwest Pacific Ocean. To avoid confusion, military meteorologists named typhoons after their wives or girlfriends. After the war, the US National Weather Service compiled an alphabetical list of female names. The main idea of this list was to use short, simple and easy to remember names.
By 1950, the first system in the names of hurricanes appeared. First they chose the phonetic army alphabet, and in 1953 they decided to return to female names. Subsequently, the assignment of female names to hurricanes entered the system and was extended to other tropical cyclones - to Pacific typhoons, storms of the Indian Ocean, the Timor Sea and the northwestern coast of Australia. I had to streamline the naming procedure itself. So, the first hurricane of the year began to be called a female name, starting with the first letter of the alphabet, the second - with the second, etc. The names were chosen to be short, easy to pronounce and easy to remember. For typhoons, there was a list of 84 female names. In 1979, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), in conjunction with the US National Weather Service, expanded this list to include male names as well.
Since there are several basins where hurricanes form, there are also several lists of names. There are 6 alphabetical lists for Atlantic Basin hurricanes, each with 21 names, used for 6 consecutive years and then repeated. If there are more than 21 Atlantic hurricanes in a year, the Greek alphabet will come into play.
In the event that a typhoon is particularly destructive, the name given to it is struck off the list and replaced by another. So the name Katrina is forever crossed off the list of meteorologists.
In the Pacific Northwest, typhoons have the names of animals, flowers, trees, and even foods: Nakri, Yufung, Kanmuri, Kopu. The Japanese refused to give female names to the deadly typhoons, because they consider women there to be gentle and quiet creatures. And the tropical cyclones of the northern Indian Ocean remain nameless.
Hurricane Matthew killed hundreds of people along the coast caribbean and in the eastern United States, thousands were left homeless.
The next hurricanes to hit these areas will be named Nicole and Otto. Who gives them these names?
Why do hurricanes have "human" names?
It turns out that for the last 100 years, hurricanes have been given names. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), hurricanes are given "human" names to spread information about them faster and avoid confusion among meteorologists, researchers, first responders, ship captains, the media and residents of disaster areas.
Why are these names chosen and not others?
About 100 years ago, storms were given arbitrary names. But one day a hurricane raging in the Atlantic Ocean destroyed a ship owned by Antje. That hurricane was nicknamed “Antje”. Then, in the middle of the 20th century, hurricanes began to be given female names.
Meteorologists decided to move to a more organized and efficient system. They systematized the choice of name according to the military phonetic alphabet.
Thus, if the first hurricane happened in the year, then it was called with the letter "A", the second - with the letter "B", and so on. By the end of the 20th century, male names were added to the list.
Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic:
If we talk about "Matthew", then this is the 13th cyclone that passed through the Caribbean region, Gulf of Mexico And North Atlantic in 2016. Lists of names in this region are formed five years in advance, so in 2022 the list of 2016 will be valid again. In each year, 21 names are recorded for each letter of the alphabet, except for Q, U, X, Y and Z.
The names of storms that caused severe damage are removed from the list and replaced with other names. For example, such was Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or Sandy in 2012. We won't see them on the list anymore.
Text by Pavel Digay
At Ragan Matthew, he pretty much played tricks in the Caribbean and American coast. However, a frivolous tone is inappropriate here, since there were not enough toppled billboards, torn roofs and broken boats. People died - in Cuba, Jamaica ... Only in Haiti - more than five hundred. So "had a trick" is clearly not the right word.
There is no doubt that there would have been even more victims if, by the time the hurricane had reached the mainland, it had not exhausted itself, had not run out of steam. And if they had not prepared for a meeting with him, a state of emergency was declared in advance in the region; residents of Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina were urged to “get away from the coast” if possible, in other words, they were called to evacuate.
However, what the "Monster named Matt" managed to do and managed to do, as the newspapermen called him, was enough for this name - Matthew - to be forever deleted from the lists of the World Meteorological Organization that gives names to hurricanes. That's the rule.
Rules appear over time, they are polished by him. Before the advent of a coherent naming system for hurricanes, they received their names by chance, although much more often they remained nameless. But still it happened...
Sometimes the hurricane was called the name of the saint, on the day of which he revealed himself to people in all his horror. So, for example, happened with the hurricane Santa Anna, which reached Puerto Rico on July 26, 1825, the day of St. Anna. If the hurricane reappeared on the same day - after a year, two, ten, a century, it was assigned a serial number: this is how San Felipe and San Felipe II appeared on the pages of history.
Sometimes the hurricane was named after the area, more than others affected by the frenzy of the elements. One of the most good examples- The Galveston hurricane that hit the city of Galveston on September 8, 1900, the wind speed then was 214 km / h.
Later, meteorologists learned to track the path of hurricanes, and the most powerful hurricane of 1935 was named "Pin" - "by association." But since it was not the first piece of tailoring that resembled the form of its development, it was also numbered as No. 4.
The need to establish, if not control, then accounting for natural disasters led to the fact that hurricanes began to be assigned four-digit numbers: the first two digits are the year (or rather, the last two digits of the year, because we are talking about the 20th century), the second pair of digits is the serial number this year. They also tried to name hurricanes with reference to geographical coordinates.
All these methods, however, were not very convenient, but for the time being nothing better could be invented. It helped, oddly enough, the war, the essence of which is actually destruction, not creation. And yet ... American pilots flying over the Pacific Ocean began to call the typhoons that threatened them the names of their wives and girlfriends. They did this not so much out of love for them, but out of necessity - in order to avoid confusion in radiograms, and besides, it shortened the text of the programs, which was also useful, sometimes vital.
The experience of American pilots was called for in 1950, when it was decided to give proper names to all storms whose wind speed on the Beaufort scale exceeds 64 knots, that is, hurricanes*.
(* In fairness, it should be noted that as early as the beginning of the 20th century, the Australian meteorologist Clement Rugg began to assign names to natural disasters ... those parliamentarians who refused to vote for granting loans for meteorological research, only this did not really affect them ...)
But it is only partially in demand, since instead of female names it was decided to use the phonetic alphabet used in radio communications by the US military. Accordingly, the first hurricanes that appeared after this reform were named Able, Baker, Charlie **.
(** Phonetic alphabet is standardized for given language and/or organizing the way letters are read. If suddenly someone decided to use the Old Slavonic phonetic alphabet to name natural disasters, then hurricanes would be called Az, Buki, Vedi ...)
However, the alphabet is not infinite, and this did not get rid of confusion - there were too many "Charlie" and "Able" on the air. And that's when they remembered women's names. The idea is really wonderful - there are many of them, they are short, they are easily perceived and stored in memory. In general, what is needed.
The new system debuted in 1953 to begin with in the Atlantic. For this reason, English, German, Spanish and French female names were included in the lists. One for each letter of the Latin alphabet ... Although, no, not for each: it was decided not to use the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z - female names for these letters are not very simple and not too euphonious, that is, they do not meet the requirements for him requirements. So there are 21 names left on the list. Accordingly, the first hurricane of the season will necessarily begin with the letter A, the second - with the letter B, and so on. It is easy to calculate that the same hurricane "Matthew" is the thirteenth on the list of 2016, and the fourteenth will begin with the letter N.
Excuse me, but is Matthew a female name? Of course not. The explanation here is simple: the undivided dominance of women in this area continued until 1979, when, at the initiative of meteorologists in Oceania, the World Meteorological Organization expanded the "hurricane list" by including male names - they began to alternate with female ones.
This decision turned out to be doubly successful, because the lists needed to be replenished, and difficulties began to arise with the choice of female names. Firstly, not one name was required, but six, because the “hurricane lists” were created six years in advance, at the end of the cycle everything starts all over again. And secondly (and this is the main thing!), some names were deleted from the lists, they needed to be replaced.
Yes, the list of names is not a dogma. If the name falls out of common use, it can be replaced by another one. But more often than not, the reason is different. If a hurricane had catastrophic consequences, then its name remains forever in history and is never used again. So, for example, none of them will bear the name Katrina anymore - after the 2005 hurricane that almost destroyed St. Louis. There will be no hurricane Irene in the future - after the hurricane of 2011, which accounted for several dozen deaths. After 2012, the name Sandy disappeared from the list. Matthew crossed out this year ...
Even if not all names were used in this year, the next year begins with a new list, again with a name starting with the letter A. A reasonable question arises: if there are fewer hurricanes than 21, and if there are more, then how? In this case (this really happened in 2005), they use the letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on.
Be that as it may, the "Atlantic" example showed its viability, and a similar naming approach was used for other zones where hurricanes form - for the Pacific and Indian oceans, for the Timor Sea, for the northwestern coast of Australia. However, here it is worth saying exactly what about the approach, there was no blind copying.
The Japanese, for example, categorically refused to give female names to typhoons. They consider women to be gentle, peaceful, obedient beings, in short, not at all like typhoons. So they give typhoons the names of animals, flowers, trees, and even foods.
In the north of the Indian Ocean, for reasons of tolerance, the lists are formed not on the basis of the letters of the alphabet, but on the principle of “one name for each country in the region”, and the cyclones that do not leave the equatorial latitudes were left completely unnamed.
The rotation of names in different regions also has differences: somewhere a three-year cycle is adopted, and somewhere the names go in a circle without reference to years - giving last name from the list, meteorologists simply return to the top of the list.
But let's agree - all this is particular. The principle is unchanged: a real hurricane must have a name! To make it clear who to fear and whom to curse.
Women's names worse
Worse than? Than men's. At least when it comes to hurricanes. This was proved by psychologists from the University of Illinois (USA). At first they were at an impasse: on the one hand, the name of the hurricane has nothing to do with its intensity, it is assigned automatically, according to the approved list; on the other hand, the number of victims and material damage is always higher for hurricanes with female names, and this pattern persists even in cases where the "male" hurricane is noticeably more powerful than the "female" hurricane. Further research clarified the essence of the matter. It turns out that women's names of natural disasters cause less fear in people compared to men's, so people are less confident, for example, in calls to evacuate from dangerous areas, which leads to an increase in the number of victims.
How do they appear
Hurricanes form over the oceans when the water temperature exceeds 26 degrees Celsius. A hurricane creates a perturbation that occurs when warm, moist air that comes into contact with the sea begins to rise. Reaching high altitudes, it condenses, releasing heat. It causes other masses of hot air to rise and condense, a kind of chain reaction occurs. Meanwhile, the air flows begin to rotate in a counterclockwise direction (clockwise - in southern hemisphere) due to the rotation of the Earth, dragging clouds of perturbation with it. When the wind speed reaches 130 km / h, it is already a hurricane. Hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the rotation of the Earth, move westward (from Africa towards America) at a speed that at first does not exceed 20-25 km / h.
What's in his name...
Hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones… This is natural phenomena of the same order, similar in their characteristics. Hurricane-like storms in the Atlantic Ocean are called hurricanes, in the Pacific Ocean - typhoons, in the Indian Ocean - cyclones, off the coast of Australia - "willivilli", in Oceania - "willivaw", and in the Philippines - "baguio".
Hurricane- the distorted name of the god of fear, Huracan, among the Indians of the South American Quiche tribe. In the Atlantic, hurricane season begins in June and continues through November. The seasonal norm is the formation of 12 storms, of which six become hurricanes, including three very strong ones.
Typhoon- from the Chinese "tai fung" or "tai feng", which means "big wind". The typhoon activity zone is located between the coast East Asia in the west, the equator in the south, and the date line in the east. On average, there are about 30 typhoons per year, most of which develop to the stage of a hurricane, the rest reach the stage of a tropical storm. Most of typhoons are formed from May to November.
Cyclones found in both the northern and southern parts of the Indian Ocean. On average, there are 8 to 9 hurricanes per year (in the Bay of Bengal largest number cyclones occur in May and October, while the minimum number is in July and February.
Russian variant
In October 2015, the Russian Hydrometeorological Center decided to give proper names to cyclones, anticyclones and other dangerous weather phenomena operating on the territory of the country in order to raise the level of public awareness of their danger. In this our meteorologists have followed the example of the United States, Great Britain, Ireland and Germany. At the same time, it was agreed that the naming procedure will be integrated with the European and Far Eastern ones, that is, if a cyclone moves through Europe and already has a name, it will not change, the same with the arrival of a typhoon in Primorye or the Kuril Islands.
A popular vote was announced. Several hundred proposals were received - for 25 letters, it was decided to use as many. The final selection was carried out by meteorologists and linguists, and the choice was determined not by the popularity of the name or its “purely Slavic” roots, but by its dissimilarity to others and ease of remembering. Here they are: Artemy-Agnia, Bulat-Bella, Vera-Vitus, Gleb-Galina, Daria -Daniel, Yegor-Elena, Zhanna-Zhdan, Zakhar-Zara, Inga-Ivan, Kirill-Karina, Lydia-Lev, Matvey-Maria, Nina-Nestor, Oscar-Oksana, Polina-Petr, Rinat-Rosa, Snezhana-Severin , Timur-Tamara, Undine-Ustin, Fadey-Faina, Kharita-Khariton, Caesar-Cheslava, Elina-Eldar, Yuri-Yuliana, Yana-Yaroslav.
As early as December 2015 Russian list“debuted” - the name Artemy was given to a whirlwind that brought winds of more than 25 m / s and heavy precipitation to the Crimea and Krasnodar.
"Katrina", "Harvey", "Nina", "Camilla". These are all the names of not random people, but the names of some of the most destructive hurricanes in history.
Hurricane Harvey, which formed on August 17, 2017, has already been named one of the most destructive in US history. Now in the States they are evaluating its consequences and comparing it with the deadly Katrina of 2005.
We propose to figure out where the names of natural disasters come from.
Why do they need names?
In the world long time there is a practice of naming hurricanes, storms and other natural disasters - primarily to avoid confusion, especially when several elements rage in the same area.
Without it, nameless storms and hurricanes would greatly complicate the lives of meteorologists, rescuers and others, since names facilitate communication and therefore increase safety.
The aftermath of Hurricane Wilma Photo from open sources
The names of hurricanes and storms help avoid misunderstandings in weather forecasting and storm warnings.
Background
Initially, naming was haphazard and random. Sometimes the hurricane was named after the saint on whose feast day the disaster occurred. For example, in July 1825 in Puerto Rico, the hurricane received the name "Santa Anna", since it reached the island on the day of St. Anna.
In addition, the name can be given according to the area that suffered the most, as well as the form of the development of the hurricane: this is how the Pin 4 hurricane got its name in 1935.
Also known is a somewhat original method of naming hurricanes, invented in 1887 by the Australian meteorologist Clement Rugg: he once decided to name typhoons after members of parliament who refused to vote for loans for meteorological research.
The tradition of naming typhoons and hurricanes by female names spread during World War II.
Photos from open sources
Air Force and US Navy meteorologists, observing the elements in the Pacific Northwest, began to call them after their wives and girlfriends to avoid confusion. After the war, the US National Weather Service compiled an alphabetical list of female names. His main idea was to use short, simple and easy to remember names.
The first system in the names of hurricanes appeared by 1950, in 1953 it was decided to return to female names. Subsequently, the naming procedure was streamlined. So, the first hurricane of the year began to be called a female name, starting with the first letter of the alphabet, the second - with the second, and so on. For typhoons, there was a list of 84 female names.
Photos from open sources
In 1979, the World Meteorological Organization expanded the list to include male names as well.
There are 6 alphabetical listings for Atlantic Basin hurricanes, each with 21 names. They are used for six years in a row, and then repeated.
If there are more than 21 hurricanes in a year, then the Greek alphabet will be used.
An important detail: if the hurricane is especially destructive, the name given to it is crossed off the list. So, "Katrina" has already been crossed out, now the same possibility is being considered in relation to "Harvey".
In the Pacific Northwest, typhoons are named after animals, flowers, trees, and foods.
Most destructive
Throughout history, the population of the Earth has repeatedly faced powerful and destructive natural disasters. Some of them went down in history because of the massive destruction and casualties.
Hurricane Fifi in September 1974 caused enormous damage. Then the winds reached speeds of 200 km / h, powerful showers destroyed many settlements, crops, banana plantations, as well as about 80% of industrial enterprises.
In total, more than 10 thousand people died because of the hurricane, another 600 thousand lost their homes.
Hurricane Mitch, which passed through the countries of Central America in 1998, destroyed entire cities and villages.
Hurricane Mitch Photo from open sources
It raged in four countries - Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. As a result, 11 thousand people died, another 10 thousand went missing, thousands lost their homes. In addition, almost 80% of crops were destroyed.
At the end of August 2005, the most destructive hurricane Katrina in the history of the country happened in the United States: about 1.3 thousand people died as a result of the elements. Damage from the hurricane amounted to $125 billion.
Hurricane Katrina Photo from open sources
In May 2008, Tropical Cyclone Nargiz hit Myanmar. It caused a catastrophic flood that killed 138,000 people and affected another 2.4 million people.
