The practice of using names to identify tropical cyclones goes back several centuries, with storms named after places, saints or things they hit before the formal start of naming in each basin. Examples of such names are the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane (also known as the "San Felipe II" hurricane) and the 1938 New England hurricane. The system currently in place provides identification of tropical cyclones in a brief form that is easily understood and recognized by the public. The credit for the first usage of personal names for weather systems is given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887 and 1907. This system of naming fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of World War II for the Western Pacific. Over the following decades, formal naming schemes were introduced for several tropical cyclone basins, including the North and South Atlantic, Eastern, Central, Western and Southern Pacific basins as well as the Australian region and Indian Ocean. However, there has been controversy over the names used at various times, with names being dropped for religious and political reasons. Female names were exclusively used in the basins at various times between 1945 and 2000 and were the subject of several protests. At present tropical cyclones are officially named by one of eleven meteorological services and retain their names throughout their lifetimes. Due to the potential for longevity and multiple concurrent storms, the names reduce the confusion about what storm is being described in forecasts, watches and warnings. Names are assigned in order from predetermined lists once storms have one, three, or ten-minute sustained wind speeds of more than 65 km/h (40 mph), depending on which basin it originates in. Standards vary from basin to basin, with some tropical depressions named in the Western Pacific, while a significant amount of gale-force winds are required in the Southern Hemisphere. The names of significant tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Australian region are retired from the naming lists and replaced with another name, at meetings of the World Meteorological Organization's various tropical cyclone committees.
Background
The practice of using names to identify tropical cyclones goes back several centuries, with systems named after places, people (like Roman Catholic saints), or things they hit before the formal start of naming in each basin. Examples include the 1526 San Francisco hurricane (named after Saint Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is observed by Catholics on October 4), the 1834 Padre Ruiz hurricane (named after a then-recently deceased Catholic priest whose funeral service was being held in the Dominican Republic upon landfall there), the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane (named after Lake Okeechobee in the state of Florida, United States, where many of its effects were felt; also named the San Felipe II hurricane in the predominantly-Catholic island of Puerto Rico after a certain Saint Philip with a September 13 feast day), and the 1938 New England hurricane. Credit for the first usage of personal names for weather is generally given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887 and 1907. Wragge used names drawn from the letters of the Greek alphabet, Greek and Roman mythology and female names to describe weather systems over Australia, New Zealand and the Antarctic. After the new Australian government had failed to create a federal weather bureau and appoint him director, Wragge started naming cyclones after political figures. This naming system subsequently fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of the Second World War. Despite falling into disuse, the naming scheme was occasionally mentioned in the press, with an editorial published in the Launceston Examiner newspaper on October 5, 1935 that called for its return. Wragge's naming scheme was also mentioned within Sir Napier Shaw's "Manual of Meteorology," which likened it to a "child naming waves". After reading about Clement Wragge, George Stewart was inspired to write a novel, Storm, about a storm affecting California which was named Maria. The book was widely read after it was published in 1941 by Random House, especially by United States Army Air Corps and United States Navy (USN) meteorologists during World War II.
Formal start of naming During the latter stages of World War II, forecasters with the United States Armed Forces (USAF) began informally naming tropical cyclones over the Pacific Ocean after their wives and sweethearts. In 1945, after the practice had become popular among forecasters who found that it reduced confusion during map discussions, the USAF formalized the scheme and started to publicly assign female names to tropical cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere and male names to those in the Southern Hemisphere. At the time, attempts were made to persuade the United States Weather Bureau (USWB) to start using female names for Atlantic hurricanes, but the bureau wanted to be seen as a serious enterprise and felt that it was "not appropriate" to name tropical cyclones while warning the United States public. As a result, the USAF started to use the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet to name significant tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean. Over the next few years, names continued to be assigned to tropical cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere, but the practice fell into disuse within the Southern Hemisphere.
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