13 Things Bluster About Extreme Weather

Caitlin Stall-Paquet views on Extreme Weather

- By Caitlin Stall-Paquet

1 HURRICANE WHO? We've been naming storms since the 19th century, thanks to a meteorologist in Australia who started naming them after politicians he disliked. Using female names caught on in the United States in the 1950s. Weather reports even included sexist cliches about "temperamental" storms "flirting" with coasts. Male names got folded into the mix by 1979, after Florida feminist Roxcy Bolton campaigned for equality.

2 THE ASSOCIATION with destruction can make hurricane monikers plunge in popularity as baby names, which is what happened to Katrina after 2005 and then Ida after 2021. Both were Category 5 hurricanes, the most catastrophic on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, with winds of more than 157 mph. Particularly bad storms such as these have had their names retired by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the group that selects the names. The WMO lists 21 alphabetical names each year (it skips Q, U, X, Y and Z). All 21 names were used in both 2020 and 2021.

3 MAYBE NOT with cats and dogs, but it really does rain animals sometimes. Tornadoes can pick up critters and carry them long distances, leading to accounts of frogs or fish falling from the sky as recently as last year, when anchovies rained down on San Francisco.