Nobody would ever forget Katrina. Hurricane Katrina of August 2005. Katrina is considered to be one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. Then there was the deadly Hurricane Mathew in 2016, and Harvey this year. These hurricanes remain fresh in our memory not just because of the mass loss to life and property, but for their interesting names, too.
How do these tropical storms get their names? Before we get to that, one should understand that hurricane, typhoon and cyclone are all the same—different names for tropical storms depending on where they originate. Hurricane in the Atlantic and northeast Pacific, Typhoon in the northwest Pacific and Cyclone in the south Pacific Indian ocean.
Meteorologists started naming these using names because it was easier to remember and also to alert people. If you would just call it a 'storm' or a 'cyclone' it would often create confusion among people as there would be more than one storm occurring at the same time at different regions. In the 1900s, people, for some reason, started using random female names to name cyclones. Later, meteorologists agreed to come up with a formal system of naming. In 1950, the US National Hurricane Centre starting naming storms in alphabetic order. For instance, the first storm of the year would begin with a name that starts with 'A', the second with 'B' and so on. These names were reused year after year.
The naming process has gone through much fine-tuning, and today hurricanes are named according to a list generated and maintained by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). Six lists of names, alternating male and female names, have been generated. Each of this list gets used once in six years, whoch means the names that get used this year will reappear only in 2023. That said, some names of storms that have been devastating will be taken off the list and can't be reused again. Storm names that have been removed include Haiyan (Philippines, 2013), Sandy (USA, 2012), Katrina (USA, 2005), Mitch (Honduras, 1998) and Tracy (Darwin, 1974).
Cyclones in India
Cyclone Vardah wreaked havoc in coastal Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh last year. The name Vardah, was however, given by Pakistan. How does that work? Cyclones passing over the northern part of the Indian ocean are named by eight countries—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Maldives and Oman. Eight set of name suggestions from these countries have been compiled and used sequentially. This is in agreement with the World Meteorological Organisation.
