(no subject)

[camwyn]

Wilma.

Wilma.

ARRRGH!

Have we ever gotten to the W hurricane before?

Comments

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

Oh, lord. *Braces herself for more bad hurrican news and Flintstones jokes*

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

This is the first time since the 1930s.

[quintus.livejournal.com]

Put your money in sandbag manufacturing now... that way global warming can't be said to be something that damages US wealth. :-)

It's just a blip...


Honest.

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

Anything is a blip if you use a long enough time scale.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

*facepalm*

Some names should just be banned from the damn list.

[aberrantangels]

Minutes before coming up here and seeing this post, I saw/heard on CNN that they're going to use Greek letters for any subsequent 'canes.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

No X, Y or Z?

Xavier, Yolanda and Zeke come to mind.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

We get Xavier and the X-Men jokes will trigger our first Category 6 hurricane.

[camwyn]

Nope. The storm names only go up to W in the Atlantic lists. I don't know about the eastern Pacific lists, or the other regional lists for that matter.

[nycscribbler.livejournal.com]

The Eastern lists go all the way to Z, but they stop changing them up once it hits... X. They just have one male and one female name for each of the following letters.

http://www.fema.gov/hazards/hurricanes/epachurs.shtm

[sundre.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia has an extensive list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_names) and explanation/history of storm naming conventions.

[nycscribbler.livejournal.com]

OMG. I am in geeky love with that entry. *takes it home and calls it George*

[sundre.livejournal.com]

S'okay. You can have George. I've got a mad crush on Bort (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made-up_words_in_The_Simpsons).

[milkshake-b.livejournal.com]

Oh, look. Xavier, Yolanda, and Zeke. *peers suspiciously upthread*

[almeda.livejournal.com]

They skipped a lot of letters in the list this year. Dammit.

[sundre.livejournal.com]

what? i didn't think they ever skipped letters. i mean, there aren't any Q or U names on the lists (i assume they couldn't find six of each) but the rest seem to be there.

[eljuno.livejournal.com]

Nope. Or 'V', either.

Next come Alpha, Beta, Gamma and so on.

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Crap. I remember it getting to the "S" name one year I lived in Tampa (and wasn't that a fraught time of my life) but not up to the "W".

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

Is anybody else still having issues with their decision to start giving storms male names? Or is it just me being unable to get over something that really doesn't matter?

[camwyn]

They alternate back and forth between the sexes. I don't see what the problem is. And if anyone brings up the neologism 'himicane' I shall beat them to death with a herstory book and throw them to the nearest group of radical woperdaughters.

(Because, you know, 'womyn' still looks sort of like 'men', and 'woperson' still has 'son' in it, and... you get the idea.)

[drharper.livejournal.com]

This is dying to be metaquoted. May I?

[camwyn]

Sure, go ahead.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Here (http://www.livejournal.com/community/metaquotes/4097525.html) you go. ;)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

North Atlantic names have been that way for 26 years, one half of the time that they've had official personal names at all.

Australian/South Pacific names were female-only for ten years and have been mixed for 31 years.

Northeast Pacific names were female-only for 19 years, and mixed for the last 27; Northwest Pacific were female for 34 years, then mixed for 21, but since 2000 have been drawn from all sorts of sources, not just personal names.

Which golden age is it that you're having trouble getting out of?

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

(Here from metaquotes, btw)

[camwyn]

Me? I have no problem with the gender distribution of the names, although frankly I prefer the northwest Pacific scheme overall as it makes for less embarrassing situations for people who might carry the personal names. I was six years old when they started on the male names for the Atlantic storms- Hurricane Bud was the first male-named North Atlantic hurricane, if I recall correctly. Kind of a silly name if you ask me, but I suppose they had to start somewhere.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

It's supposed to have threaded as a reply to firestrike but looks like LJ blipped! Oops!

Hurricane Bud is a very silly name. (And you must be around my age.)

[camwyn]

Aaah, okay. Yeah, LJ's been weird the past couple of weeks. And I was born in '74, so.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Wiiiiiiilmaaaaa, you just blew the roof off my home!

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else remember the HUGE hoo-ha in America when they first started using male names? Because, y'know, hurricanes are noisy and unpredictable and destructive, and none of those adjectives apply to men... IIRC, it took a couple of years for the Masculine Outrage to die down.

[feinan.livejournal.com]

You've heard the phrase 'mother of all storms?' Well, her name is Wilma. 884 mb, extrapolated 881 mb at the surface, I think it was, though they've not calibrated things yet. Still, we appear to have a new winner for the biggest storm in the Atlantic basin.

884 mb. This is a monster....

Hi. My name is Wilma. Any more Flintstones jokes, and I'll blow you BACK to the Stone Age.