”No need to give silly names unless they are at least funny...”
Most Met officies would disagree. Names give a storm an identity, a “personification” that develops with the forecasts, and provides a more robust basis for communicating a significant storm threat to a population, compared with a jumble of letters and numbers that provide no emotional connection to the casual listener.
I'm sure they would disagree, and personification i understand but how useful is it?
We don't do it for other weather calamities.
It would be ridiculous for tornadoes or floods.
There aren't that many cyclonic storms but there was a lot last year and the alphabet is only so big was the concern.
It wouldn't have to be a "jumble of letters and numbers that provide no emotional connection to the casual listener"either.
The weatherman would probably just say how cyclone A5 did damage to such and such areas of the US or Carribean.
People would understand how bad others were affected regardless.
But we like our names of course...i was just reading how the last severe heatwave in Europe was named "Lucifer".
What will they call this one i wonder?
Beëlzebub or just plain Satan?
You run out of religious names pretty quick as well....
The Dutch whose country was devastated and reshaped by many big storms tried a similar system, using the names of saints whose celebration days coincide with the date of the storm.
The St. Thomas or St. Lucia flood etc.
The more recent major flood of 1953 is simply remembered as the "flood disaster".
Everyone knows how bad it was but they hardly know about the much worse ones earlier ripping the country in half.
Most don't even understand tornadoes can happen here, when in fact we have the highest occurence in the world.
I manged to predict the last F4-5 outbreak accurately 3 summers ago, luck no doubt...hmmm.
I'm not placing bets but i suspect we will see more soon enough.