Why is hurricane Katrina called hurricane Katrina

Why is hurricane Katrina called hurricane Katrina

Arlene, Dean, Gabrielle, Lorenzo, Pablo and Katrina, these are common names applied to identify people. But these people’s names are also the same nicknames used to identify various hurricanes and storms in the past, present, and future.

The reason behind naming hurricanes or tropical cyclones as they are is for the public to simply remember and distinguish one storm from the others. The naming system eliminates confusion whenever talking about numerous storms that usually happens within a year and the past years.

History has it that the tradition of giving names on storms can be dated back hundreds of years ago, from using names of a particular saint to religious and secular holidays.

But why use proper names to classify a storm? The custom was said to have started by an Australian forecaster who named a certain tropical storm after a politician whom he hates. And then the rest was history so to speak.

At the time of World War II, Navy meteorologists together with the US Air Army chose to name storms and hurricanes after their wives and girlfriends, thus the start of using female nicknames on storms like Katrina”. It was not until 1979 that men’s names were added to the Eastern North Pacific hurricane list.

Today the World Meteorological Organization in Switzerland, an organization responsible for choosing names for hurricanes and tropical storms, has six lists of alphabetically arranged hurricane names. The lists are used in rotation year after year. However, the lists exclude the use of letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z because of the rarity of names that starts with those letters having a total of 21 names on the lists.

There is a way to change a hurricane or cyclone’s name on the lists, this only happens when the storm has an extremely destructive effect like Katrina in 2005. The name Katrina” is now considered retired” and is now replaced by the name Katia”.