ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 8, 1996 TAG: 9609090072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANK D. ROYLANCE THE BALTIMORE SUN
AS A PRACTICAL MATTER, storm-naming helps forecasters get the public's attention about the imminent danger.
The rain is Tess, and the fire's Joe, the songwriter said. And if enough tropical storms develop in the North Atlantic in 1999, the 13th big wind will be called Maria.
The next named storm in the hurricane season after Fran and Gustav is Hortense, of all things. There's also a tropical storm Fabian in our future in 1997, a Lenny and a Tammy in 1998.
Weather forecasters and civil authorities around the world have embraced the practice of naming tropical systems when they reach a prescribed level of violence.
They have found that it enhances their ability to get the public's attention when such storms threaten. It also helps to avoid confusion about warnings and advisories when more than one tropical storm threatens a given region.
And after the storms pass, their names survive to remind residents of the grief and the terrible destruction such events can bring.
The storm-naming process is carried out by a network of international committees, all coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, an arm of the United Nations based in Geneva.
People have long had a need to attach names to the storms that periodically ravaged their homes. Spanish-speaking residents of the Caribbean named the storms for the saints on whose feast days they arrived.
In Puerto Rico, for example, the hurricane of July 26, 1825, was named for Santa Ana. Another blow on Sept. 13, 1876, was named for San Felipe.
But for many years, to the extent that they could be found and tracked at all before satellites and modern communications, the storms were identified by their geographic coordinates, which lent itself to confusion.
It was the U.S. military that first began tagging tropical storms in this century with names ordered in an alphabetical sequence. At first, their imagination went no further than the military-issue Abel, Baker, Charlie and so on.
But during World War II, they switched to female names, assigned when the storms reach tropical storm strength: winds of 39 mph.
That practice lasted until the 1970s, when feminists protested. Giving female personalities to violent, destructive and erratic forces, they argued, reinforced ugly stereotypes.
The authorities responded, and today the names of tropical storms in the United States and in most regions of the world follow an alternating sequence of male and female names.
Political correctness also has led authorities in the Americas to incorporate names drawn from the major European cultures in the region - English, French, Spanish and Dutch.
That's the reason why American weather broadcasters are sometimes forced to get their mouths around some unfamiliar names, like Edouard.
The Atlantic storm lists are drawn up six years in advance by an international committee of meteorological and hydrologic officials named by 25 affected countries.
They do have other work. ``Their primary business is the promotion and coordination of actions to mitigate the disasters caused by tropical cyclones, with emphasis on improvement of warning systems and disaster preparedness measures,'' said Don Vickers, a meteorologist with WMO's World Weather Watch.
Fortunately for the committee members, the Atlantic list recycles every six years. This year's list will be used again in 2002.
``The only decision is whether they want to make a change,'' Vickers said. If a hurricane has caused heavy damage or many deaths, that name may be withdrawn.
The substitute name must have the same first letter and gender, but ``it's not usually a difficult decision,'' he said.
After Andrew's rampage across South Florida in 1992, the U.S. representative asked that the name be withdrawn from the 1998 list. It has been replaced by Alex.
The publicity and notoriety that frequently accompany tropical storms can stir people to ask that a name be added to the list.
``Their reasons vary quite sharply,'' Vickers said. ``Some people, it seems, would like to get their mother-in-law's name on the list. Some other people would like to put the chief person in their area who's done a lot for hurricane preparedness on the list.''
Names also can spark protest.
``I remember one name for an internationally notorious person, and at least one person wasn't happy,'' Vickers said. He did not identify the offending storm, but it may have been the first named storm of the 1995 season in the Eastern North Pacific - Adolph.
``But then again,'' he said, ``some of the hurricanes, in the views of some people, are terrible things. They cause lots of distress, and some people feel their names should reflect that.''
LENGTH: Medium: 91 linesby CNB