Hurricane Irma continues its path of destruction to Florida. Hurricane Jose is gaining strength in the Atlantic. And Hurricane Katya originates in the Gulf of Mexico. Irma, Jose, Katya? How are these energetic forces of nature given names to hurricanes?

Hurricanes are named for public safety reasons, said Claire Nullis, spokeswoman for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It has become easier for the media to publicize a storm and increase interest in warnings when the storm has a name, according to the WMO.

Why was the hurricane named Irma?

Hurricane Irma received its name because it follows Harvey on the WMO's predetermined list of hurricanes that occur in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic Ocean. Atlantic Ocean.

Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive names like Irma in writing and colloquial speech faster and less error-prone than older, more cumbersome longitude-latitude identification methods. These benefits are especially important for exchange detailed information about a storm between hundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases and ships at sea.
Using easy-to-remember names greatly reduces confusion when two or more tropical storms occur simultaneously. For example, one hurricane may be moving slowly west in the Gulf of Mexico, while at the same time another hurricane may be moving rapidly north along the Atlantic coast. In the past, confusion and false rumors arose when storm warnings broadcast from radio stations were mistaken for warnings about an entirely different storm hundreds of miles away.

Where do all these names come from, and what name will come next? You probably already know that hurricane names go to alphabetical order throughout the season, but they are more structured.

The World Meteorological Organization, which is responsible for naming hurricanes and tropical storms, has six lists they go through. (In other words, they are currently using non-service names that were also used in both 2011 and 2005). They have been using this system since 1953.

Hurricane names list

List of hurricane names, for 2017 and beyond

What are the names of hurricanes?

Hurricane names have already been planned for six years in advance, including 21. But while the names more or less follow the alphabet, don't hold your breath for Hurricanes Quinn or Humberto—there aren't any names on the list that start with Q, U, X, Y or Z, because there aren't enough of them that start with those letters, according to Nullis .

In the unlikely event that there are more hurricanes per year than predetermined names, hurricanes in this region of the world are named after Greek letters: alpha, beta, gamma, etc. Storms have been named Alpha Alpha Alpha several times: in 1972, 1973 and again in 2005, although the last storm that blew up Haiti and Dominican Republic with heavy rain, was overshadowed by the devastating effects of Hurricane Wilma.

Hurricane names are removed at the request of the country's representative at the annual meetings of a WMO committee called the Regional Association Hurricane Committee. This is done when a storm has been so destructive that future use of the hurricane's name is considered unethical, according to Nullis. Katrina, Sandy and Ike - the only catastrophic Atlantic hurricanes that impacted the US - were cut from the list (below).

Hurricane names

Names of hurricanes and typhoons

But the process of naming Atlantic hurricanes hasn't always been so neat.

Beginning in 1950, storms in this region were named after the United Army/Navy phonetic alphabet - Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog - when the convention changed to use female names, according to Patrick Fitzpatrick, professor of meteorology at Mississippi State University and author of Hurricanes: A Reference Guide (ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2006). In the interest of gender equality, male names were added in 1979, Nullis said.

Officially, the storms are not named after specific people, but that doesn't stop people from being upset about sharing their name with a massive storm, Nullis said.

She recalled a complaint last year from a man named Matthew who was unhappy about sharing his name with the 2016 storm that caused such havoc in Haiti. On another occasion, someone said the names weren't "tough" enough.

Others have different ideas on how to name hurricanes, including those who suggest they should be named after science fiction characters and others who suggest their proper names, Nullis said.

There are more vindictive people who want to stamp their personal grievances on natural disasters.

"We had one lady who asked us to name a hurricane after her ex-husband"Nullis said.

As for Irma, this is the first year that the name has been used for a hurricane. Irma took the place of Irina, a name that was removed from rotation at the request of the United States in 2012. Whether the names of recent hurricanes Irma or Harvey will be removed is a decision that will be made by the regional association's Hurricane Committee at its next meeting, to be held in France in 2020.

Why are hurricanes given human names? Here Kirill, Kiryusha, damn it, recently trampled around Europe, Katrina last year in America... Why

Hurricanes are usually given names. This is done to avoid confusion, especially when several tropical cyclones are active in the same area of ​​the world. The names are selected by the World Meteorological Organization according to a certain rule. And the rule is this: the name of the first hurricane of the year begins with the first letter English alphabet─ A, the second one gets a name starting with the letter B, and so on. It is also necessary to alternate between female and male names. For example, in 1998, the Atlantic hurricanes were named Alex, Bonnie, Charlie, Daniela, and so on.
The custom of calling typhoons and hurricanes by female names arose relatively recently. Previously, they received their names haphazardly and accidentally. Sometimes a hurricane was named after the saint on whose day the disaster occurred, or it was named after the area that suffered the most from it. Sometimes the name was determined by the very form of development of the hurricane. Thus, for example, hurricane “Pin” No. 4 got its name in 1935, the shape of its trajectory resembled the mentioned object. There is an original method for naming hurricanes, invented by an Australian meteorologist. He used his office to take professional revenge on individual members of parliament who refused to vote on weather research credits, and named typhoons after them.
At first, only women's names were used for names; later, when they became scarce, men's names were used. The tradition arose in the early 1940s of the twentieth century. At first, it was an informal terminology among U.S. Air Force and Navy meteorologists, used to facilitate the exchange of information about hurricanes found on weather maps - short female names helped to avoid confusion and shortened the text of radio and telegraphic broadcasts. Subsequently, the assignment of female names to hurricanes became part of the system and was extended to other tropical cyclones - Pacific typhoons, storms Indian Ocean, Timor Sea and northwestern coast of Australia. The naming procedure itself had to be streamlined. Thus, the first hurricane of the year began to be called a female name, starting with the first letter of the alphabet, the second - with the second, etc. The names chosen were short, easy to pronounce and easy to remember. There was a list of 84 female names for typhoons. Since 1979, tropical cyclones began to be assigned male exchanges.

Hurricane Matthew killed hundreds of people along the Caribbean coast and the eastern United States, leaving thousands homeless.

The next hurricanes to hit these areas will be named Nicole and Otto. Who gives them these names?

Why do hurricanes need “human” names?

It turns out that hurricanes have been given names for the last 100 years. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), hurricanes are given "human" names to help spread awareness and avoid confusion among meteorologists, researchers, emergency workers, ship captains, the media and residents in disaster areas.

Why are these names chosen and not others?

About 100 years ago, storms were given arbitrary names. But one day a hurricane raging in the Atlantic Ocean destroyed a ship belonging to Antje. That hurricane was called “Antje”. Then in the mid-20th century, hurricanes began to be given feminine names.

Meteorologists decided to move to a more organized and efficient system. They systematized the choice of name according to the military phonetic alphabet.

Thus, if the first hurricane occurred in a year, it was named with the letter “A”, the second with the letter “B”, and so on. By the end of the 20th century, male names were also added to the list.

Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic region:

Speaking of Matthew, this is the 13th cyclone to pass through the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic region in 2016. Lists of names in this region are formed five years in advance, so in 2022 the list of 2016 will be in effect again. In each year, 21 names are recorded for each letter of the alphabet, except Q, U, X, Y and Z.

Names of storms that caused severe damage are removed from the list and replaced with other names. For example, this was Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or Hurricane Sandy in 2012. We won't see them on the lists anymore.

Natural elements are not subject to human control. And when alarming messages come from one or another part of the globe about a tornado, typhoon, hurricane, and we hear beautiful names, which have nothing to do with the nature of the natural disaster. Have you ever wondered why hurricanes are called by female names? This tradition has a rationale that we are about to find out today.

Arbitrary naming of hurricanes

In order to avoid informational confusion about hurricanes (which can occur simultaneously in different parts of the planet), it was customary to call them not by their serial number, hurricane 544, hurricane 545, and so on, but by names.

The earliest names came from the location of the disaster, or from special dates or events when it happened. For example, in July 1825, people first started talking about Hurricane Santa Anna, which was named after the saint in Puerto Rico. It was on that day when the raging anticyclone broke out that the saint was honored in the city, it was her holiday, her calendar day.

The hurricane was christened with a woman's name. Do you think that it was then that the countdown began with this particular coordinate system? From that period of time, a tradition began to arbitrarily give names to tornadoes, typhoons and hurricanes, without a clear system or affiliation with anything.

Interesting facts about typhoon naming

An interesting fact in the name of the element: at that time there was a hurricane, which was very similar in shape to a pin. This is where his name came from. Thus, several similar pin natural disasters received their name, with serial numbers assigned in addition.

Another interesting method that an Australian meteorologist developed: he named hurricanes after politicians who voted against funding for meteorological research.

There is a peculiarity in the nature of the manifestations of these natural disasters. Or more precisely: they have their own pattern. Most often, tropical typhoons occur in the autumn, when there is a difference in temperature between water and air. And also in the summer, when the ocean temperature is highest. In winter and spring they hardly form, or are extremely rare.

Why are hurricanes in America called by women's names?

Perhaps here lies the first system of naming typhoons with beautiful names belonging to the fair half of humanity. Military personnel in the United States who served in meteorological units made it a tradition to name the uncontrollable elements after the names of their spouses and their female relatives. During this period, a list of names was first compiled that were assigned to tornadoes in alphabetical order. Names with easy to remember pronunciation were chosen. When the list ended, it began again.

This is a simple story about why hurricanes are given female names. She formed the basis new system, which began to be used not only in the USA, but also in many other countries.

The emergence of systematization of tornado names

Everyone knows that the continents of Northern and South America More than the rest of the world, it suffers from floods, typhoons and tornadoes. There are even more than a dozen American films dedicated to this natural phenomenon.

Since 1953, thanks to the idea of ​​American employees, a procedure for naming the uncontrollable elements has emerged. Remembering their women, perhaps in their honor or as a joke, but nevertheless, this was the reason why hurricanes are given female names. The list, which was compiled of 84 names, was used in its entirety for a year. After all, about 120 air cyclones form on our planet every year.

The first month of the year corresponds to names starting with the first letter of the alphabet, the second - to the second, and so on. The year 1979 marked a new stage in the tornado naming system. The list of female names was supplemented with male ones. It is worth noting that several tropical storms can form in one water basin at once, which means that there will also be several names. For example, for the Atlantic Ocean there are 6 alphabetical lists, each containing twenty-one names. If it happens that there are more than twenty-one hurricanes this year, then the subsequent names of the elements will be in the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Delta, etc.).

When are male names used?

As we have already found out, several tornadoes can form simultaneously in one area of ​​a water basin.

But why do hurricanes have female and male names? After all, it would seem that everything is simple - just add other simple but sonorous names of the fair sex to the list. The fact is that the lists are compiled by the Regional Association's Hurricane Committee, which has concluded that gender is not an ethical basis for naming hurricanes. Therefore, since 1979, not only women's, but also men's names have become part of the list of future hurricanes.

Eastern commitment to naming

The Japanese don't understand why hurricanes are called by women's names. According to them, a woman is a gentle and fragile creature. And by their nature they are unable to bear catastrophic disasters. Therefore, tornadoes that occur in the northern or western part of the Pacific Ocean will never be named after people. Despite the tradition of naming storms, they are characterized by the names of inanimate objects: plants, trees, products, and there are also names of animals.

Who names tornadoes?

As previously noted, when creating a list of future tornadoes, attention is paid to simple and sonorous names. This criterion has important. Since when exchanging information about a storm between stations, naval bases in bad weather conditions, cumbersome and complex names are inappropriate. In addition, in written and spoken language, words that are easy to pronounce are less prone to errors and confusion. After all, several tornadoes can occur simultaneously, moving in different directions along the same coast.

This is why hurricanes are called with feminine names that are simple and easy to pronounce.

There is which is responsible for naming tornadoes, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes and tropical storms. They have been using the existing system since 1953. Using names from past lists that have not previously been used, new lists are formed each year. For example, names that were not used in 2005 move to 2011, and those remaining from 2011 to 2017. Thus, lists of future typhoons are generated for every 6 years in advance.

By 2017, a new list has been formed, consisting of 6 lists of names of hurricanes that await our planet. This list is planned until 2022. Each list begins with the letter A and proceeds alphabetically. Each list contains twenty-one names.

Names starting with Q, U, X, Y, Z cannot become future ones. Since there are few of them and they are difficult to hear.

However, some tornadoes are so destructive in their power that his name is removed from the list once and for all. An example is Hurricane Katrina, which swept through the southeastern shores of North America and the Caribbean. This is the most destructive typhoon in US history, the consequences of which were simply catastrophic. And this is the case where the name was removed from the list of hurricane names. So that the memories of the elements will not be painful when the turn comes to this designation again.

The opinion of ordinary people about the names of tornadoes

Not everyone knows why hurricanes are called by women's names. There is an anecdote on this topic literally in one line. The answer is immediately clear: “Hurricanes are called by women’s names because they are just as violent. And when they leave, they take with them your house, car and everything you have left.”

Text by Pavel Digay

Matthew had a fair amount of fun in the Caribbean islands and the American coast. However, a frivolous tone is inappropriate here, since there were toppled billboards, torn off roofs and broken boats. People died - in Cuba, in Jamaica... In Haiti alone - more than five hundred. So “played a trick” is clearly not the right word.

There is no doubt that there would have been even more casualties if, by the time the hurricane reached the mainland, it had not become weak and exhausted. And if they had not prepared for the meeting with him, it was announced in the region ahead of time state of emergency; Residents of Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina were urged to “move away from the coast” if possible, in other words, they were called to evacuate.

However, what the “Monster named Matt” managed to do, as the newspapermen called him, was enough for this name - Matthew - to be forever deleted from the lists of the World Meteorological Organization, which names hurricanes. That's the rule.

Rules appear over time, and they are polished by it. Before the advent of a harmonious system for naming hurricanes, they received their names by chance, although much more often they remained nameless. But it still happened...

Sometimes the hurricane was named after the saint, on whose day he revealed himself to people in all his horror. This, for example, happened with Hurricane Santa Anna, which reached Puerto Rico on July 26, 1825, St. Anna's Day. If a hurricane appeared again on the same day - after a year, two, ten, a century, it was assigned a serial number: this is how San Felipe and San Felipe II appeared on the pages of history.

Sometimes a hurricane was named after an area that suffered more than others from the madness of the elements. One of the most illustrative examples- The Galveston Hurricane, which hit the city of Galveston on September 8, 1900, had wind speeds of 214 km/h.

Later, meteorologists learned to track the path of hurricanes, and the most powerful hurricane of 1935 was called “Pin” - “by association.” But since it was not the first whose form of development resembled an object of tailor’s craft, it was numbered as No. 4.

The need to establish, if not control, then accounting for natural disasters led to the fact that hurricanes began to be assigned four-digit numbers: the first two digits are the year (or rather, the last two digits of the year, because we are talking about the 20th century), the second pair of digits is the serial number for this year. They also tried to name hurricanes based on geographic coordinates.

All these methods, however, were not very convenient, but for the time being it was not possible to come up with anything better. What helped, oddly enough, was the war, the essence of which was actually destruction, not creation. And yet... American pilots flying over the Pacific Ocean began to call the typhoons that threatened them after the names of their wives and girlfriends. They did this not so much out of love for them, but rather out of necessity - to avoid confusion in the radiograms, and besides, it shortened the text of the broadcasts, which was also useful, sometimes vital.

The experience of American pilots was in demand in 1950, when it was decided to give proper names to all storms whose wind speed on the Beaufort scale exceeds 64 knots, that is, hurricanes*.

(* To be fair, it should be noted that at the beginning of the twentieth century, Australian meteorologist Clement Ragg began to assign names to natural disasters... those parliamentarians who refused to vote for the provision of loans for meteorological research, but this did not have much effect on them...)

But it is only partially in demand, since instead of women’s names it was decided to use the phonetic alphabet, which was used in radio communications by the American military. Accordingly, the first hurricanes that appeared after this reform received the names Able, Baker, Charlie**.

(** The phonetic alphabet is a standardized way of reading letters for a given language and/or organization. If someone suddenly thought of naming natural disaster use the Old Slavonic phonetic alphabet, then hurricanes would be called Az, Buki, Vedi...)

However, the alphabet is not endless, and this did not eliminate the confusion - there were too many “Charlie” and “Able” on the air. And that’s when they remembered women’s names. The idea is really wonderful - there are many of them, they are short, they are easily perceived and stored in memory. In general, what you need.

The new system debuted in 1953, initially in the vast Atlantic. For this reason, English, German, Spanish and French female names were included in the lists. One for each letter of the Latin alphabet... Although, no, not for each: it was decided not to use the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z - female names for these letters are not very simple and not very euphonious, that is, they do not meet the requirements for them requirements. So there are 21 names left on the list. Accordingly, the first hurricane of the season will necessarily begin with the letter A, the second with the letter B, and so on. It is easy to calculate that the same hurricane “Matthew” is the thirteenth on the list of 2016, and the fourteenth will begin with the letter N.

Sorry, but is Matthew a girl's name? Of course not. The explanation here is simple: undivided female dominance in this area continued until 1979, when, on the initiative of meteorologists in Oceania, the World Meteorological Organization expanded the “hurricane list” to include male names - they began to alternate with female ones.

This decision turned out to be doubly successful, because the lists needed to be replenished, and difficulties began to arise with the choice of female names. Firstly, not one name was required, but six, because the “hurricane lists” were created six years in advance, and at the end of the cycle everything starts all over again. And secondly (and this is the main thing!), some names were crossed off the lists and needed replacement.

Yes, the list of names is not dogma. If a name falls out of widespread use, it may be replaced by another. But more often the reason is different. If a hurricane had catastrophic consequences, then its name remains forever in history and is never used again. For example, none of them will anymore bear the name Katrina - after the 2005 hurricane that almost destroyed St. Louis. There will be no Hurricane Irene in the future - after the 2011 hurricane, which caused several dozen deaths. After 2012, Sandy's name disappeared from the list. This year has crossed out Matthew...

Even if not all the names were used in a given year, the next year begins with a new list, again with a name starting with the letter A. A reasonable question arises: what if there are fewer hurricanes than 21, and if there are more, then what? In this case (this actually happened in 2005), the letters of the Greek alphabet are used: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on.

Be that as it may, the “Atlantic” example showed its viability, and a similar naming approach was used for other zones where hurricanes form - for the Pacific and Indian Oceans, for the Timor Sea, for the northwestern coast of Australia. However, what is worth saying here is that there was no blind copying about the approach.

The Japanese, for example, categorically refused to give typhoons female names. They consider women to be gentle, peaceful, obedient creatures, in short, not at all like typhoons. That's why they give typhoons names of animals, flowers, trees, and even foods.

In the north of the Indian Ocean, for reasons of tolerance, lists are formed not on the basis of the letters of the alphabet, but on the principle of “one name for each country in the region,” and cyclones that do not leave the equatorial latitudes are completely left unnamed.

The rotation of names in different regions also has differences: in some places a three-year cycle is adopted, and in others the names go in a circle without reference to years - having given the last name from the list, meteorologists simply return to the beginning of the list.

But let's agree - all this is particular. The principle remains unchanged: a real hurricane must have a name! To make it clear who to fear and whom to curse.

Women's names are worse
Worse than? Than men's. At least when it comes to hurricanes. This was proven by psychologists from the University of Illinois (USA). At first they were at a dead end: on the one hand, the name of a hurricane has nothing to do with its intensity, it is assigned automatically, according to the approved list; on the other hand, the number of casualties and material damage is always higher for hurricanes with female names, and this pattern persists even in cases where the “male” hurricane is noticeably more powerful than the “female” one. Further research clarified the matter. It turns out that female names for natural disasters evoke less fear in people compared to male ones, so people are less trusting, for example, of calls to evacuate from dangerous areas, which leads to an increase in the number of victims.

How do they appear?
Hurricanes form over the oceans when water temperatures exceed 26 degrees Celsius. A hurricane generates perturbation, which occurs when warm and wet air, coming into contact with the sea, begins to rise. Having reached high altitudes, it condenses, releasing heat. It causes other masses of hot air to rise and condense, causing a kind of chain reaction. Meanwhile, the air flows begin to rotate in a counterclockwise direction (clockwise - in Southern Hemisphere) due to the rotation of the Earth, dragging along the clouds of perturbation. When the wind speed reaches 130 km/h, it is already a hurricane. Hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the rotation of the Earth, move westward (from Africa towards America) at a speed that initially does not exceed 20-25 km/h.

What's in his name...
Hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones... This natural phenomena of the same order, similar in their characteristics. Hurricane-like storms in the Atlantic Ocean are called hurricanes. Pacific Ocean- typhoons, in the Indian Ocean - cyclones, off the coast of Australia - "williwilly", in Oceania - "willivaw", and in the Philippines - "baguio".
Hurricane- a distorted name of the god of fear Huracan among the South American Quiche Indians. In the Atlantic, hurricane season begins in June and continues until November. The seasonal norm is the formation of 12 storms, of which six become hurricanes, including three very strong ones.
Typhoon- from the Chinese “tai fung” or “tai feng”, which means “big wind”. The typhoon activity zone is between the coasts East Asia in the west, the equator in the south and the date line in the east. On average, there are about 30 typhoons per year, most of which develop to the hurricane stage, the rest reach the tropical storm stage. Most typhoons form from May to November.
Cyclones found in both the northern and southern parts of the Indian Ocean. On average there are 8 to 9 hurricanes per year (in the Bay of Bengal greatest number Cyclones occur in May and October, while the minimum number occurs in July and February.

Russian variant
In October 2015, the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia decided to give proper names to cyclones, anticyclones and other dangerous weather phenomena operating in the country in order to increase the level of public awareness of their danger. In this our meteorologists have followed the example of the United States, Great Britain, Ireland and Germany. At the same time, it was agreed that the naming procedure would be integrated with the European and Far Eastern ones, that is, if a cyclone moves through Europe and already has a name, it will not change, the same with the arrival of a typhoon in Primorye or the Kuril Islands.
A popular vote was announced. Several hundred proposals were received - for 25 letters, it was decided to use that many. The final selection was made by meteorologists and linguists, and the choice was determined not by the popularity of the name or its “purely Slavic” roots, but by its dissimilarity from others and ease of memorization. Here they are: Artemy-Agniya, Bulat-Bella, Vera-Vitus, Gleb-Galina, Daria -Daniil, Egor-Elena, Zhanna-Zhdan, Zakhar-Zara, Inga-Ivan, Kirill-Karina, Lydia-Lev, Matvey-Maria, Nina-Nestor, Oscar-Oksana, Polina-Peter, Rinat-Rosa, Snezhana-Severin , Timur-Tamara, Ondine-Ustin, Fadey-Faina, Kharita-Khariton, Caesar-Cheslava, Elina-Eldar, Yuri-Yuliana, Yana-Yaroslav.
Already in December 2015 Russian list“made its debut” - the name Artemy was given to the whirlwind, which brought winds of more than 25 m/s and heavy precipitation to Crimea and Krasnodar.