Why Name Old Man Winter?
How should we view innovative approaches to communicating about the weather…
By Kevin Starbuck
Winter storms are nothing new to the northern latitudes. But in 2012, the Weather Channel took to naming winter storm events as a marketing campaign to communicate information on Mother Nature’s cold side… much to the chagrin of their government counterparts at NOAA and the National Weather Service. So as “Ajax”, “Goliath”, and “Mars” bring blizzard conditions to the country, you won’t see the name used in any official warnings issued by government officials.
Why Name Storms?
For much of the 20th century, people struggled to find ways to identify tropical storms, hurricanes, and cyclones. Storms were typically referred to by the geographic location or intensity of the storm (i.e. Galveston Hurricane of 1900). In 1953, the National Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) began giving major tropical storms women’s names to more easily communicate the threat to the public. The practice continues to this day, with political correctness adding male names to the mix starting in 1979.
This practice of naming major tropical storms served as the basis for the Weather Channel to adopt a similar practice for major winter storms. For most Americans this change passed with only a passing notice… so, why not refer to a blizzard as Nemo, Hercules, or Jonas. It sounds cool and gives an easy reference to all those winter weather activities.
Fellow meteorologists were not amused… Officially, the National Weather Service offered no opinion about “private” weather enterprise products and services. Their belief is that winter storm impacts vary as they track across the country, making it difficult to discern one storm from another. Internally, the National Weather Service directed their offices to not use winter storm names in any of their communication to the public and have encouraged others to not use the names. These sentiments have also been echoed by Accuweather and other private weather providers. Generally, the response has been a dismissive “harrumph” to the idea.
However, the public has seemed to taken to the naming of winter storms with greater acceptance each year. In the end, isn’t the goal of a weather forecast to communicate information to the public? If naming a major winter storm helps to capture the public’s attention and improve communication, shouldn’t that be embraced? It would seem at a minimum that the meteorological community should at least evaluate if the naming of major winter storms has a positive impact on communication to the public. Perhaps we will find that this private sector innovation improves our interest in the current official lineup of outlooks, advisories, watches, and warnings.
So is naming winter storms a good thing or should it be relegated to your local Dairy Queen?
Kevin Starbuck is a local government emergency manager in the Texas Panhandle region for the last 20 years. The article is posted as part of the on-going exploration of homeland security topics by Homeland XYZ… join us in the conversation!
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