Hurricanes

I don’t know what Doppler is, but I know it’s important to storm-fighting and vital to the survival of a given weather team and its ability to interrupt network programming. It’s also vital in capturing and replaying a 0.8 second clip of hurricane Ernesto traveling west. If there were any doubt, a weather team member will motion westward. “As Doppler is showing us, Ernesto is heading west. Ernesto, that’s Spanish.”

Okay, they don’t say that second part, but they almost do because, really, is it necessary to name hurricanes? Couldn’t they just say “the hurricane”? If, in the rare occurrence there were more than one hurricane in an area, couldn’t they just say (for instance) “the hurricane hitting at 1 p.m.” and “the hurricane hitting at 5 p.m.”?

Naming hurricanes is the most meteorically destructive and romanticized practice available to overweight people who couldn’t cut it reading stories about the local wiener dog race off a teleprompter. Naming hurricanes, goddamnit, encourages tropical storms to grow in size and force by promising notoriety. “Oh, I’m just hanging out in the Caribbean twirling around and not hurting anyone. Wait, I could get really pissed and attack some beachfront property and finally get a name. Then I finally could get someone to listen to my tape!”

Jesus, since when are hurricanes so frequent that the only way to identify them is to assign them a white, black or Hispanic person’s first name? “You know that huge storm that killed 50 people and caused $83 million worth of property damage?” Yeah. “Yeah, well, I know it happened two years ago, but I just wish I had a handy way of separating it from the one that happened 5 years ago. If only there was a way…”

But why that way? Why does the name of a hurricane have to be a person’s name? Wouldn’t “the Huge Fucking Hurricane of 2005” do the trick? If we have to do names, can’t we at least do nicknames? I like Stumpy. “Stumpy is heading for Wrightsville Beach! All people in the area are required to evacuate immediately!” And leave Stumpy to find his way around a new town? He’s the new guy. Not a chance.

If we just went back to calling hurricanes “typhoons”, I think that would be enough to satiate romantic impulses. “Look out, a hurricane’s coming!” Eh, come back to me.  “Look out, a typhoon’s coming!” Alright, alright, I’m sold.