It's "Hurricane Sandy" to many, "Frankenstorm" to some and "Winter Storm Athena" to no one.
Nonetheless, The Weather Channel says it's not backing off its plan to name this year's winter storms, the first of which would be Athena. This just isn't her.
What has become popularly known as an impending "Frankenstorm" — a potentially devastating and highly unusual mix of tropical and winter weather approaching the mid-to-upper Eastern Seaboard — is being called simply Hurricane Sandy by The Weather Channel, along with the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center and other forecasters.
TWC announced early this month its plan to name this year's U.S. winter storms, in a manner somewhat similar to the naming of hurricanes. By the channel's criteria, Athena would be the season's first weather system that involves snow and ice and/or extreme temperatures or wind; that significantly affects travel; and that TWC thinks people need to know about.
In the "Frankenstorm" scenario for next week, a winter storm approaching from the Midwest would collide with a polar air mass and the tropical event that is Hurricane Sandy. But even though a winter storm would occur, TWC says it wouldn't be worthy of a winter-storm name.
"So far, what it looks like is that the winter component will actually be more a part of the Sandy system," Bryan Norcross, senior executive director of weather content at The Weather Channel, said today. "We're forecasting heavy snow in the mountains of West Virginia associated with the moisture coming in from the Atlantic as part of this system.
"As far as now, it's all Sandy."
This is one scenario detractors presented when TWC announced its naming plan: Where does one system end, and another begin? In this case, would Sandy be merging with a winter storm, or simply morphing into a storm with wintry elements? Norcross said TWC forecasters see it as the latter.
"It's Hurricane Sandy and it's likely to be Hurricane Sandy up to near landfall," Norcross said. "It gets kind of technical in the middle, but I think the National Hurricane Center is going to work hard to keep it Hurricane Sandy. We follow their lead on the name. If it worked to become by some meteorological status something other than a tropical system, then we would still call it Sandy."
While that might appear to contradict TWC's aim to name this year's winter storms, it also serves to not introduce a third moniker for a storm that already has two. "Sandy" is the official product of the National Hurricane Center's naming system. "Frankenstorm" burst upon the scene Thursday, popularized in news and social media after discussions that day at the National Weather Service's Hydrometeorological Prediction Center.
"I want to emphasize that storms usually get names that are carried over after the event," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Louis Uccellini told reporters today while explaining the origin of the "Frankenstorm" term. "During the event, this will be referred to as 'Sandy.'"
But Norcross left open the chance that "Athena" could still rear her head in coming days.
"There is some possibility that a significant winter component, more than we're currently forecasting, could become part of this after Sandy moves on, and we'd have to think about whether (that) is Athena," Norcross said.
Or, he added, TWC could decide after the fact that the name Athena should have been used and opt to skip it going forward. That would put the channel on "Brutus" watch.
For his two cents, James Franklin, branch chief at the National Hurricane Center, offered a simple answer to what Sandy's after-effects might be called ...
"Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy," he said.
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