The Hurricanes They are meteorological phenomena that, seen by satellite, are seen as highly organized systems, and that even have a singular beauty. However, they often cause significant material damage and can take the lives of hundreds of people, just as Hurricane Matthew has done in Haiti.
But who decides the name of the hurricanes? Y, Why do they have their own name?
The list of names for tropical cyclones that form in the Atlantic Ocean It was created in 1953 by the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC). Currently, this list is used as a standard for the list of other regions of the world, and is updated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which is an agency of the United Nations based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Hurricane names are arranged in alphabetical order, except for the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z, and male and female names alternate. The names are different for each region, so that alerts can be better given and there is no confusion.
Although it may seem otherwise, names are used, not only in English, but also in Spanish and French. Further, are recycled every six years, but there are some that are no longer used if the hurricane in question has been devastating, as happened with Katrina, which left 2000 dead in New Orleans (USA) in 2005, for example.
As a curiosity, it must be said that meteorologists used mostly female names during World War II: the names of their mothers, wives or lovers, explained Koji Kuroiwa, head of the WMO tropical cyclone program. Starting in the 1970s, male names were also added to avoid gender imbalance.
However, female hurricanes kill more people than those with male names, according to a study from the University of Illinois (USA). The reason is that the former are not usually taken very seriously, so the necessary preparatory measures are not taken to deal with them. For this reason, the National Hurricane Center stressed that, regardless of the name of a hurricane, the focus must be placed on the threat posed by each.