gender storms

in the eye of a storm sounds like a truly fearful place to be. when you watch, courtesy CNN, google et al, the havoc wrought on the american atlantic coast by the likes of benign sounding weather phenomenon like katrina and ike, it’s likely you’ll want to be as far away from any eye as possible.

it sounds almost epic, even heroic, evocative of the great battles of the ages to suggest that one was caught in the eye of the storm. bullshit! i haven’t been there, but it’s probably a safe bet that if you’re caught in the eye of such a storm, you could probably do worse than just staying put. remember, the eye of a storm is defined as a region of calm weather right in the middle of a storm.

but the problem is intuitively obvious: how does one get there? and from a newscaster’s perspective, what’s the point: TV ratings never go up where nothing ever happens.

tropical storm names used to be exclusively feminine. this last great frontier of gender discrimination was finally drowned out in 1979, allowing male and female waves to breech levies in equal measure of destruction. but where do these names come from?

working together in weather, climate and water (really!) is the tag line of the world meteorological organization. these guys have an international committee that has exclusive naming rights over all global storms. is this the last great marketing wilderness to be conquered before space?

unlikely. it’s a safe bet that hurricane names are not going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. i mean which marketing guy would want to spend millions of dollars for the branding rights of something with no guarantee of delivery and impact. I know, for example, that the 10th atlantic storm in 2010 is going to be called julia, but i still can’t see many takers.

which makes me think, thank god we use an english language naming convention for tropical storms and hurricanes. i mean, try getting your tongue around julia in latvian (dzulija, with various squiggles over 'z' and 'u'); or albanian (xhuliana); or greek (loulia). clearly, only english will work.

in an apparent concession to global harmony, the exception is the western north pacific where impacted countries are given a last wish by contributing naming rights. so north korea proffers kalmaegi; hong kong, fung-wong; the philippines, hagupit and lupit; and laos gives us nock-ten. but i don’t think any of these countries actually pay for the privilege of getting beat up on.

but going back to this committee, imagine being compensated for making up lists of names that bring only misery.

there are name-lists for every area of the world prone to tropical storms, cyclones, hurricanes. and this is how it works: for each storm season, a list of 21 names are compiled starting with the alphabet 'a' and ending with 'w' ('q' and 'u' are excluded).

six such lists are put together and then, simply keep repeating themselves. of course, particularly virulent and violent storms are dropped or retired. therefore, unlike lightening, katrina never strikes twice! but, this naming convention allows me to accurately tell you her progeny till 2013, starting this year: kyle, kate, karl, katia, kirk and karen.

auspiciously for most of us, i could find no list for any geographic area anywhere that contained either the name sarah or palin.

inauspiciously for alaska, storm hilary is due to hit the eastern north pacific in 2011, 8th in sequence for that season. isn’t that about when campaigning for the next presidential elections begin?

perhaps this would have been one gender battle better lost, and storms should continue to wear lipstick.