Storm Names
My brother-in-law has just written: "Today we have Storm Brian and the wind is horrendous.” And I think why do we name storms and hurricanes? And who decides which name to give?
It turns out that meteorologists long ago learned that naming tropical storms and hurricanes helps people remember the storms, communicate about them more effectively, and so stay safer if and when a particular storm strikes a coast.
While people have been naming major storms for hundreds of years, most hurricanes were originally designated by a system of latitude-longitude numbers, which was useful to meteorologists trying to track these storms. Unfortunately, this system was confusing to people living on coasts seeking hurricane information.
In 1950, a formal practice for storm naming was first developed for the Atlantic Ocean by the U.S. National Hurricane Center. At that time, storms were named according to a phonetic alphabet (e.g., Able, Baker, Charlie) and the names used were the same for each hurricane season; in other words, the first hurricane of a season was always named 'Able', the second 'Baker', and so on.
In 1953, to avoid the repetitive use of names, the system was revised so that storms would be named after female names. By doing this, the National Weather Service was mimicking the habit of Naval meteorologists, who named the storms after women, much as ships at sea were traditionally named for women.
In 1979, the system was revised again to include both female and male hurricane names.
NOAA’s National Hurricane Center does not control the naming of tropical storms. Instead, there is a strict procedure established by the World Meteorological Organization. For Atlantic hurricanes, there is a list of male and female names which are used on a six-year rotation. The only time that there is a change is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate. In the event that more than twenty-one named tropical cyclones occur in a season, any additional storms will take names from the Greek alphabet.
By the way, the name Dorothy has been used for three tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean:
Hurricane Dorothy (1966) - formed in July in the north Atlantic Ocean, remained away from land;
Tropical Storm Dorothy (1970) - Deadliest tropical storm of the season, caused 51 deaths, mostly in Martinique, while moving through the Lesser Antilles;
Hurricane Dorothy (1977) - formed near Bermuda and became extratropical near Newfoundland.
Запоминаем:
horrendous - устрашающий
hurricane - ураган
to designate - обозначать
to track - прослеживать
repetitive - повторяющийся
to mimick - подражать
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) - федеральное ведомство в структуре Министерства торговли США; занимается различными видами метеорологических и геодезических исследований и прогнозов для США и их владений, изучением мирового океана и атмосферы
a six-year rotation - шестилетняя ротация
