The Mother of [Con]vention: Hurricane Naming

Hurricanes and tropical storms have a long history of designated names; but the tradition started out of necessity rather than vanity. During the more bucolic days of meteorology in the Atlantic continents, cyclonic activity over water was dubbed by its latitude and longitude from origin point and then two points ahead to form a rough trajectory. This method was prone to human error and the numerals were difficult to remember. In the midst of the Second World War, the military took to ascribing female names to hurricanes. This convention came with such relative ease that it was adopted by the NHC (National Hurricane Center) as early as 1953, exclusively used in storms stemming from the Atlantic Ocean before spreading to typhoons.

Nowadays, each year comes packaged with a list of twenty-one procedurally generated names (omitting names that began with Q,U,X,Y,Z). The first documented storm would receive the name that began with A and any subsequent low-pressure system would be poised for the next alphanumeric in the queue. Infatuated with this method of encapsulating storms within easy-to-recall monikers, The Weather Channel tried expanding this trend to winter storms, which was met with a fair amount of controversy amongst meteorological sites. As such, TWC is the only official media that uses winter storm naming in conjunction with typhoon and tropical storm names; its variety following the same twenty-one character pattern.

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