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The Greek Alphabet Will No Longer Be Used To Name Hurricanes (nytimes.com) 129

Posted by BeauHD from the unnecessarily-confusing dept.
The Greek alphabet has been retired as a way of identifying tropical storms, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday. The New York Times reports: The decision was made after nine Greek letters were pressed into service last year during the record-breaking 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, which exhausted the normal list of 21 storm names prepared by the organization. Greek letters had been used to name storms only once before, in 2005, another busy hurricane season that produced Hurricane Katrina, among others. National Weather Service officials said the Greek alphabet got in the way of the main reason for naming storms -- to help the public readily identify and track them. Many people were confused by the sounds of the Greek letters, and public attention often focused more on the use of the alphabet itself than on the destruction caused by the storms, officials said.

The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency, said its Hurricane Committee had developed a supplemental list of names that could be deployed instead of Greek letters when the standard list is exhausted in a given season. The 21-name backup list of Atlantic storms begins with Adria, Braylen and Caridad, and ends with Viviana and Will. Like the main list of storm names, the supplemental list does not include names that begin with the letters Q, U, X, Y or Z, which officials said are not common enough or easily understood across English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, the languages frequently spoken throughout North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

The World Meteorological Organization also said on Wednesday that Dorian, Laura, Eta and Iota would no longer appear on the rotating lists of Atlantic tropical storm names, which repeat every six years. The names were retired, the organization said, because of the death and destruction the storms had caused.
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The Greek Alphabet Will No Longer Be Used To Name Hurricanes More

The Greek Alphabet Will No Longer Be Used To Name Hurricanes

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  • Why create something new? (Score:5, Funny)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Thursday March 18, 2021 @09:11PM (#61174454)

    Why not use the NATO phonetic alphabet, which is specifically designed to be easily understood across many languages?

    Then again, "Hurricane Whiskey" sounds too weird. Never mind.

    • "Hurricane Hotel" sounds kind of exciting, though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Hurricane Kilo might be misconstrued by people...

    • Whiskey is not easy to say in many languages. Including Spanish.

      • Spain joined NATO in 1982 a little too late to have say in how the phonetic alphabet was formed. They had to sort out the whole fascist dictator thing first. I am curious about which Spanish speakers you think have trouble with the word whiskey. Accents vary between dialects of course but most of the Spanish speakers I've met in the US don't have a big enough problem with whiskey for it to have ever been noticeable.

        Having said all that, the NATO phonetic alphabet is the way it is due to studies conducted to

        • most of the Spanish speakers I've met in the US don't have a big enough problem with whiskey for it to have ever been noticeable.

          that's because they have learned English lol. Any accent can be learned.

      • Which is why it got changed to william
        • The "NATO phonetic alphabet" (which is not NATO's, and isn't a phonetic alphabet, but is properly the "International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet") changed "Whiskey" to "William"?

          Citation needed.

          It was changed from "William" to "Whiskey" just after WW2, as the usage spread from the military to rapidly growing civil aviation.

          I had to research this recently for my wife, as she was doing Russian language telephone support from an office in Portugal. The Russian equivalent spelling alphabet mostly uses

          • I served from 88 - 95. Condition William gets set throughout the ship during a CBR attack. All the hatch and vent systems are marked with a W. Its part of the condition of readiness. X-ray (X) has not been the minimum level since Perl Harbor attacks. Now the minimum condition of readiness is Yoke (Y). At general quarters we go to condition Zebra (Z) and close all those hatches. When we talk on those sound-powered headsets we say William. Circle William, Circle Xray, Circle Zebra, etc, indicates you can pass

    • Re:Why create something new? (Score:4, Funny)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @02:27AM (#61174936)

      Why not use the NATO phonetic alphabet, which is specifically designed to be easily understood across many languages?

      Then again, "Hurricane Whiskey" sounds too weird. Never mind.

      Chances are if we're up to "W", Mother Nature is too drunk on hurricanes to care.

    • NATO's pretty close actually, the requirement that they are distinguishable by English, French, and Spanish cover's most of the concerns, but it also was designed with the intention of being distinguishable by professionals over a poor communication interface. If 'Hurricane Whiskey' sounds weird, imagine a news warning in Miami about 'Hurricane Quebec'. They definitely weren't chosen in a way that makes them useful for substitution as either proper nouns or to avoid confusion of a geographical place.

      The bi

      • Why are we bothering to name every cyclone that comes from the Atlantic anyways? How about instead of blowing through the list naming every tropical storm we just name the big ones?

      • Indeed, "Hurricane Québec hits India" or "Hurricane India hits Québec" would just lead to total confusion.

    • It sounds like a country music song
    • Btw William has replaced it in most cases. It has been since my service in 1988. The two are interchangeable. See the section on closure markings in this manual. We use phonetic alphabets on closures because of the poor clarity with sound-powered headsets. https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/... [3m.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jaegs ( 645749 )

      And when they run out of single names, they can start using two-code-word combinations, such as: Hurricane Tango Uniform or Hurricane Bravo Zulu.

  • confused, really? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Thursday March 18, 2021 @09:16PM (#61174462)

    Really, populace "confused by the sounds of greek letters"? What kind of ignorant uneducated dolts are the school systems turning out? Heck cycle through Greek alphabet to begin with, then go to "alpha 2" "beta 2" etc. with 3's next. Problem solved forever.

    • Heh. First university lesson on algebra in my school started with the teacher writing out the whole Greek alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, just in case we didn't remember it from high school and needed a refresher.

      • Hah! University you say?
        First lesson in my PRIMARY school and it started with the teacher writing out the whole Greek alphabet, just in case we did not remember from kindergarden.
        And this was no fancy private school or anything, just a typical public school (in Athens).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rhipf ( 525263 )

          Why are they teaching the Greek alphabet to kindergarten children in Georgia? 8^)

        • Primary school you say? The instant we popped out the womb we had the entirety of the Greek alphabet tattooed on our chubby little thighs!

    • What kind of ignorant uneducated dolts are the school systems turning out?

      Which school system? There are a 195 countries in the world, not all of them speak english or greek.

      • Yet strangely enough, most those countries that teach math will use the greek letters.

        • Not really though. Math students learn mathematical symbols. It turns out some of those symbols are Greek letters. But students only learn those that are part of formulae. Iota, for example, is almost never taught.

          • If I recollect correctly, we studied the Greek alphabet in classics, long before the Phis and Gammas leaked into maths classes.

            • I'm not let down by this thread one bit. Half of slashdot taking the opportunity to claim that they are superior to the general population. Just what I would expect.

              • Oh its worse than that. The pet hobby of a large chunk of Slashdots readership is trying to claim superiority over the scientists. Just watch, almost *any* science article posted here, gets immediately shat upon by a bunch of people that, lets be honest here aren't scientists but IT tech support people.

                Its like a pack of fundamental christians or vaccine denialists have psyopsed themselves into thinking THEY are the the real skeptical logic guys. Its embarassing.

                it didn't used to be like this.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Malc ( 1751 )

            Although "not one iota" is a common idiom in American English (at least I learnt it when I was living in the US.)

        • I'm tempted to ask the wife how they taught maths in Russia. But then ... Cyril composed the Cyrilic alphabet from largely Greek roots, so not a lot of distinction there.
      • I'm pretty sure that many countries don't speak Latin but they still use the Latin alphabet anyway. So what was it you were trying to say?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fazig ( 2909523 )
          Don't tell them about Arabic numerals.
          • Well, what you presumably call "Arabic numerals" at least got their contemporary shapes in Europe, even though I think half or so of the Maghribi numerals is still recognizable in shape.

    • Really, populace "confused by the sounds of greek letters"?

      Quick, hear the difference between beta, theta, eta, and zeta. Those are half of the first eight letters of the greek alphabet. These names need to be spoken, not just read.

      • There are 7 dwarf names just sitting there ready to be deployed - just imagine, Hurricane Grumpy and Hurricane Sleepy!

      • Really, populace "confused by the sounds of greek letters"?

        Quick, hear the difference between beta, theta, eta, and zeta. Those are half of the first eight letters of the greek alphabet. These names need to be spoken, not just read.

        "M! As in Mancy!"

    • The greek symbol mu (mm-you) sounds like an M but written like a cursive U. Perhaps the sequence of letters is what is confusing

  • Just name them all 'Karen' until further notice.

  • Name them after oil companies and their pet ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Thursday March 18, 2021 @09:58PM (#61174570)

    Name them after oil companies and their pet conservative politicians:

    Hurricane McConnell
    Hurricane Cheney
    Hurricane Exxon
    Hurricane Aramco
    Tropical Storm Shell
    Tropical Storm Schlumberger

    • Oh man, there's so many places you could go from here

      Hurricane F-Super-Duty
      Hurricane Nuclear Lobby
      Tropical Storm Blood for Oil

  • We need some good down-home names for hurricanes, such as:

    Hurricane Bubba
    Hurricane Cletus
    Hurricane Cooter

  • Hurricane modes? (Score:3)

    by nyet ( 19118 ) on Thursday March 18, 2021 @11:16PM (#61174692) Homepage

    Locrian has a nice ring to it.

  • public attention often focused more on the use of the alphabet itself than on the destruction caused by the storms, officials said.

    What's left out is the fact that by the point of using the first Greek letter for a named hurricane we'd already gone through 21 hurricanes previously - perhaps the issue is that the average person wearied of hurricane reports that over-play the possible damage (just to be safe!) and only found the new names even slightly interesting?

    Also, how serious snd where were the Greek Letter hurricanes? Americans, for example have less interest in storms that are not threatening the US coastline.

  • Rotate through different alphabets (Score:3)

    by LaughingRadish ( 2694765 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @01:08AM (#61174830) Journal

    Let's just rotate through alphabets. For X years, we'll use Cyrillic. Then it can be Tengwar, Klingon, Dethek, Enochian, Sanskrit, and so on.

    • Booo, you skipped Elvish.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Whibla ( 210729 )

      Let's just rotate through alphabets. For X years, we'll use Cyrillic. Then it can be Tengwar, Klingon, Dethek, Enochian, Sanskrit, and so on.

      I'm not sure naming hurricanes in Old Enochian would be sensible. Having some meteorologist eaten by a Great Old One they accidentally summoned by running through a list of the year's tropical storms might make for great TV viewing, but it wouldn't bode well, long term...

    • I'm a fan of Thai, because every letter has a meaning :D
      E.g. Chicken, Egg, Bottle, Buffalo and so on ... (Laos uses a similar alphabet)
      No idea if Sanskrit letters have a meaning beyond sound, but they look certainly good.

  • Hurricane Anus, Hurricane Bumboclaat, Hurricane Cunt, Hurricane Dong, etc.

  • The Greek alphabet has 24 letters, so where did the other three go?
    BTW there are even three more additional letters that are used only as numerals.

  • Well at least not human names. Klingon would be fine.

  • Why not just use numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slowmail ( 750922 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @03:28AM (#61174990)
    01, 02, 03... I believe that's what the Japan Meteorological Agency does. They just start from 01 each year. A simple and straightforward system...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kbahey ( 102895 )

      01, 02, 03... I believe that's what the Japan Meteorological Agency does. They just start from 01 each year. A simple and straightforward system...

      Better yet, use the naming system that is used for comets: year, then serial number.

      So 2020-01 is the first one in that year. 2020-33 is the 33rd, for when we ever get more than what we usually get now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cra ( 172225 )

      I totally agree! Using names is just juvenile anyways. It was the [first/second/third] [storm/huricane/tornado] of August 2020. I don't go about remembering when John or Joana were here.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Whibla ( 210729 )

      Even better, start naming at 00.

      "So we're seeing the first pictures of hurricane 04, the fifth tropical storm this year, as it comes ashore..."

    • Nah, go back to women's names. Very appropriate for hurricanes. People have lost their sense of humor.

  • Dorian, Laura, Eta and Iota would no longer appear on the rotating lists of Atlantic tropical storm names...

    Eta and Iota are also Greek letters, so were these names put on double secret probation?

  • I suggest naming them after songs (Score:3)

    by Maelwryth ( 982896 ) on Friday March 19, 2021 @09:40AM (#61175658) Homepage Journal
    At least it would be humorous.

    1 - Riding the Storm Out - REO Speedwagon. Topping our list of stormy tunes, nobody said it better than REO (Live version) with this 70s arena anthem. "And the wind outside is frightening ..."

    2 - Rock You Like a Hurricane - the Scorpions. A fast metal hurricane tune.

    3 - It's Raining Again - Supertramp. A great song by a the band who brought us "Crisis, what crisis?" years earlier.

    4 - Help! - the Beatles. We may need rescue (...and if the rain doesn't stop, we will all escape in a Yellow Submarine!)

    5 - The Hurricane by Bob Dylan, the ultimate song writer who had a strong opinion about storms, politics, and peace.

    6 - Power (Outage) by Kansas. Hope you planned ahead with a generator or lots of batteries.

    7 - Left in the Dark written by Jim Steinman (sung by Meatloaf). Two songs about the loss of lights ⦠we wait in the dark for the storm to pass.

    8 - Cloudbusting - Kate Bush

    9 - Save Me by Queen, from The Game LP which also scored "Another One Bites the Dust" (but we hope no one bites the dust this year!). Be safe.

    10 - Come Sail Away by Styx. If all else fails, get on a boat. Find an island and start fresh.

    11 - Beastie by Jethro Tull: This hurricane is a beast coming ashore. Heavy Water plays well here, too.

    12 - The Bitch is Back by Elton John for Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Sandy's cousin, who were both a cruel b****.

    13 - Who'll Stop the Rain by CCR, aka Creedence Clearwater Revival

    14 - Umbrella by Rihanna

    15 - Riders on the Storm - The Doors

    16 - Thunder and Lightning - Thin Lizzy and Phil Collins

    17 - The Rain Song - by Led Zeppelin

    18 - Standing in the Rain by ELO from the double-lp Out of the Blue album, Electric Light Orchestra's classic seminal spacecraft of unforgettable songs for the decade. Several of them fit perfectly with storms.

    19. - Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones "Oh a storm is threatening... if I don't get some shelter, oh yeah I'm gonna fade away."

    20 - Here Comes the Flood by Peter Gabriel

    Nicked from https://www.top2040.com/2014/0... [top2040.com]

  • which officials said are not common enough or easily understood across English, Spanish, French and Portuguese,
    Seriously?

    Q Quetzalcoatle - oki, probably not that common ... but a fitting name
    U Ursula
    X Xavier
    Y Yvonne
    Z Zora

    It is not that hard, took me more to type this than to get 5 names.

    Looking up some baby names would probably give some better candidates, though.

  • The Greek alphabet has been used to make racist comments and had to be cancelled.

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