US East Coast is battling Hurricane Florence. With winds up to 140 mph that is accompanied by incessant days-long rain, the hurricane is billed as “a monster”. In fact, 1.7 million people are told to flee the expected path of the storm. Right now, all we can do is hope that the storm passes away quickly, and the casualties remain at minimal.
(Courtesy: Nypost)
That all being though, it makes one wonder how these stormsare named—and who names them. Like, in 2013, South India fought Cyclone Ockhi. In 2016, it dealt with Storm Vardah. In 2014, there was Hudhud and Nilofar. Phew...
How do these get such names?
There aren’t clear answers to this. These natural disasters are given names because it becomes easier to raise awareness among people. The media can use the name and report much more easily. The officials can issue statements and warnings without calling the disaster as “storm” or “flood”. Thisvagueness might fail to reach and inform people clearly and easily.
In fact, this has been proven on various studies that causalities remain much less when storms are named than be nameless.
So, government institutes (and sometimes the media) often give names to storms so to inform people better. This is why these names are often easier to pronounce and remember.
(Courtesy: Gawker)
In India, given a lot of storms happen largely in the South region, they all get South-ish names so that people there can easily understand and recognize it. Here, MET does the naming part. Most of these organizations already have a long list of names that they give to storms on the basis of season, region and magnitude.
There isn’t any much of a theory as to how they come up with these names. The basic consideration is most likely how easy is it to say and how quickly one can remember the name. They also ensure the name is influenced by the native lingo on the region where it’s happening.
In short, they factor just how easily marketable the name is to the people it concerns the most. The more marketable the name is, the easier it gets to spread the awareness.
(Courtesy: PRI.org)
If the officials see a storm that looks similar to previous ones, they might name them all same. But in case, if the disaster is big and one-of-a-kind, its name might never be used again.
This is the basic concept of how storms are named and who name them.