August 18, 2007

Hurricane Names

Did you ever wonder who gave the Hurricanes their names? Like Katrina, Joyce or even Rose? I read a news item about a recent Hurricane Dean which had been moved to category II or something. So I googled this and found this site:http://www.fema.gov/kids/hunames3.htm which lists the Hurricane names for the past many years. So when I saw the listings, I thought every year they began with a name from 'A' and hoped there weren't in excess of 26 hurricanes per year as they juggled past the alphabet. And I naturally assumed that Dean was the 4th of the year and hence the name. But browse to the last column, they already have names upto W. So does that mean that Hurricane Wendy has already blown past? If so, why is Dean still lingering? Am I asking too many questions? But admit it.. its a point to ponder.

On further reading, I came across this site: http://kids.earth.nasa.gov/archive/hurricane/names.html which explains that hurricane names have an expiry date too! And they put it across surreally and call them retired.

4 comments:

Pramod said...

I've read that hurricane names alternate in years with male and female names!!!!!!

Interesting indeed!!!!

Jaya said...

Yeah.. interesting indeed... Had no clue about any of that! Very amusing.. Wnder who came up with a name plan.

Unknown said...

The same hurricane names are used over and over, they repeat every 4-5 years or so (can't remember). If they are really catastrophic, their names are retired. For eg., there will never be an Andrew or a Katrina ever again. And yes, Dean looks ready to rip Yucatan apart. Hope it is not as bad as it seems to be. And hope it does not gain strength before hitting the gulf coast. The path is very similar to that of Katrina's

Jaya said...

Yeah.. living in Florida, I expect you to know all that Anantha... But being in a (touch-wood) non-hurricany place, I had no idea till I pondered over it and googled.

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