Naming Cyclones Is No ‘Fani’ Business

Bhubaneswar: Cyclone ‘Fani’ is likely to recurve towards the Odisha coast, triggering heavy to very heavy rainfall in the south and east coastal districts while there will be isolated heavy rainfall at one or two places in the northern districts of the state.

According to the India Meteorological Department, the impact of this cyclonic storm in Odisha will be more than that of ‘Titli’, which had brought high speed winds and rainfall after making landfall at Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh last October.

Cyclones and hurricanes that create havoc and destruction and even those that don’t, are often given peculiar names like ‘Fani’, ‘Titli’, ‘Laila’, ‘Helen’ etc. The names have always been amusing but ever wondered how these are chosen and why?

Cyclones were not identified by any name initially, but the tradition started with a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. The name given was Antje, as the hurricane ripped off the mast of bast of the same name. Any tropical storm reaching sustained wind speed of 39 miles per hour was given some name.

Just so you are not confused, cyclone, hurricane and typhoons are all the same. Tropical storms are termed differently in different parts of the world. They are called hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons in the Pacific, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean. Any storm, whose wind speed reaches or crosses 74 miles per hour, is classified as a cyclone.

Starting from the start of naming cyclones, people in the Caribbean islands would give storms some local names, all of which were based on the saint of the day from the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar. The Atlantics have been naming storms since past few hundred years.

The Caribbean tradition continued till World War II. Post the war, forecasters and meteorologists started using female names to identify the storms.

The US weather service, in 1953, took the idea and created a new phonetic alphabet (international) of women’s names from A to W, except the letters Q,U,X,Y and Z in the pursuit of a more organised and efficient naming system.

The idea of portraying women as destructive drew criticism. The protests led to inclusion of male names for the storms since 1978. From then on, men’s names were introduced and they alternate with the women’s names under which, six lists are used in rotation.

Naming of cyclones across the globe is a recent phenomenon. World Meteorological Organization is usually the apex body deciding the names.

In India, or the storms arising in the Indian Ocean, the procedure of assigning names began in 2000. However, a set formula was agreed upon only in 2004 – the reason Odisha’s 1999 Supercyclone had no name. The names are given by the Indian Meteorological Department and the first tropical cyclone to be named was Onil, in 2004. It was a name given by Bangladesh.

Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand were the eight countries of the region that put together 64 names, giving eight names each. These are the names assigned sequentially whenever there’s a cyclonic storm – the latest one being ‘Fani’, a name contributed by Bangladesh.

The name ‘Titli’, which means butterfly, was picked by Pakistan. This severe cyclonic storm triggered heavy rain and left a trail of destruction in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh last October.

Cyclone Phailin that caused massive destruction in the state in 2014, was given by Thailand.

The question as to why name a cyclone has quite an unexpectedly simple answer – for easy remembrance and tracking. It is easier to say ‘Cyclone Titli’ in 2018, than memorising the number of the storm’s longitude and latitude. Names are also helpful when there are more than one cyclones to track.

Use of short, distinctive names makes it less cumbersome. For the media, it becomes easier to report by using names. The names are also helpful in exchanging detailed storm information between hundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases, and ships at sea.

The cyclones that cause widespread damage and deaths usually retire. It means, these names are not used at least for 10 years. New names replace those. An annual meeting by the WMO Tropical Cyclone Committees strikes off these offending names from the list.

Once officially retired, done as a mark of respect to the dead, the names are replaced with a name of the same gender and beginning with a same letter. Since 1972, as many as 50 names have been struck off, including infamous ones like Haiyan (Philippines, 2013), Sandy (USA, 2012), Katrina (USA, 2005), Mitch (Honduras, 1998).

And no, the World Meteorological Organization never runs out of names! They have a long list of names contributed by different sections of the world, the nine regions. They are North Atlantic, Eastern North Pacific, Central North Pacific, Western North Pacific, North Indian Ocean, South West Indian Ocean, Australian, Southern Pacific and South Atlantic.