No names, please

This business of naming weather systems — hurricanes, typhoons, winter storms and, as far as I know, Saturday afternoon drizzles, is getting even more out of hand.

Some countries over in Europe, having recently spent several weeks on the upper rack of the broiler, are now talking about naming heat waves.

By Stewart Dobson

I don’t think this is a good idea. And I’m not just talking about the inevitable headlines that will be plastered across TV screens and newspapers if a heatwave were to be assigned a human name.

Consider the possibility of, say, Heat Wave Martha. I don’t know about anyone else but I think a headline declaring, “Spain Succumbs to Hot Martha” is asking for trouble.

Ditto: Sally Sizzles, Blistering Betty or even Thermogenic Thelma.

Such circumstances would just beg headline writers (like me) to go overboard trying to be clever. Besides, I don’t quite understand the point of naming weather systems after people anyway.

It’s not as if storms, high winds, heat waves, monsoons and whatnot are made any better by knowing them on a first-name basis.

“Wow, it’s 118 degrees outside, but this is Heatwave Roscoe, so I’m not suffering as much as I would otherwise.”

“Yeah, it would be much worse if we didn’t know who it was.”

Right.

The same logic applies to hurricanes, really, although I will admit that naming them does provide us with an easy point of reference. After all, it is much easier to talk about Hurricane Sandy, for instance, than to attach specific dates of a particular event so others will know what we’re talking about.

“Yeah, I lost a third of my roof when the remnants of that hurricane of Saturday, Oct. 27, through Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, went through here.”

That’s a lot to say, so giving it a name is much more convenient.

On the other hand, different kinds of bad weather, such as winter storms, cold snaps, hot spells and such, occur with much more frequency, making it tough to keep the names straight.

“Let’s see, was it Heat Wave Boiling Bob or Torrid Ted the following week that was so bad that we shaved the dog and covered him with SPF 50 just so he could go out for his morning constitutional?”

“No, you’re confused. You’re thinking of time we took all the hair he shed during Parching Petunia and glued it back on to him during Frigid Freda the winter storm so he could go out. Or was it Rainstorm Robin?”

The thing is, if we start naming every weather occurrence of any significance we’re going to have problems keeping it all straight, although I can think of one or two appropriate hot weather names, now that I’ve reflected on it.

I think in the case of an extremely hot stretch, an entirely acceptable name and subsequent headline would be, “Nolan Ryan Brings the Heat.”