With apologies to Jimmy Buffet for the title, I just wanted to mention that today is the start of the Atlantic hurricane season. Woo-hoo! Let’s hear it for cyclonic winds, flooding rains, devestating storm surges and, of course, Erika, with a k.
In case you’re wondering about that last one, you should know that Erika with a k will be the fifth named hurricane or tropical storm of the 2009 season. Hurricanes are named alphabetically from one of six pre-selected lists. The first named storm gets a name starting with an A, while the 23rd storm of the season gets named with a W, in this year’s case it’s Wanda. Not sure why the current list doesn’t have an X, Y or Z name. Maybe the fine folks at the National Hurricane Center shyed away from a challenge?
Anyway, Atlantic hurricane season runs from today through November 30, not that we tend to get all that many hurricanes that late in the season, but there’s still the possibility.
So the names. The hurricane center has six lists of names and those lists don’t change, unless, that is, there’s a hurricane that’s so devestating or takes so many lives that it’s thought best to retire the name. So far, we’ve retired 73 names because they were associated with bad happenings. Well, more bad than normal for a hurricane.
One of the retired names still makes me laugh: Georges, prounced (roughly) as zhyourzh. I know it was a bad hurricane and did a lot of damage, but that name just sounds so silly. We also got rid of Hortense in 1996 and Wilma in 2005. Again, probably bad hurricanes, but, still, I’m just glad we got rid of them because the names themselves are so silly.
“Oh, no! Hortense is coming for me.”
Sorry, just doesn’t work.
Maybe we should name hurricanes stuff like Slayer or Mega Deth, you know, the classic rock bands. Now those would inspire fear when the hurricanes to which they’re lending their names start bearing down on you.
– Richard
Tags: A Dude's Guide to Life, About, age, Apologies, Atlantic Hurricane Season, Classic Rock Bands, Cyclonic Winds, dude, Dude's, Erika, Fear, Hortense, Hurricane One, Hurricanes, Jimmy Buffet, Laugh, Man, Many Hurricanes, men, names, National Hurricane Center, Rain, Reason, richard, silly, Slayer, Storm Surges, Tropical Storm, Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season, Wanda, Wilma