Gamma Gamma Hey
Posted on November 14, 2005 Posted by John Scalzi 12 Comments
I predicted we’d get a storm called "Gamma" by Thanksgiving. Turns out it’ll be here with a couple of weeks to spare. I win! Where’s my pony?
Posted on November 14, 2005 Posted by John Scalzi 12 Comments
I predicted we’d get a storm called "Gamma" by Thanksgiving. Turns out it’ll be here with a couple of weeks to spare. I win! Where’s my pony?
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Athena Scalzi, editor – AMS
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It’s just an up year in the hurricane cycle, no global climate change to see here. Move along, move along.
But if the last storm was Beta, shouldn’t this one be RC1?
What’s the over-under on when we’ll see Hurricane Omega?
Here’s your pony
Gamma is nothing. The hurricane season has 16 days left as of today. I wanna see if we can go for epsilon.
And what do they do next year if we run out of names again? Can we have two Hurricane Alphas?
Ooh…you want ponies? You can have ponies…
Yeah, they would probably have two Alphas. In general hurricane names are reused, unless they have a storm that’s so wicked that its name is retired. Alpha probably wouldn’t qualify.
Here’s the skinny on hurricane names.
The catch is that nobody knows what to do if a Greek-letter storm needs its name retired. How about vegetables? Hurricane Asparagus, anyone?
Haha, I like Hurrican Asparagus, Cisko! I see singing muppet vegetables. Highly inappropriate for such a serious subject, but still entertaining.
Curse you, upper level wind-shear. Not Gamma just yet according to the Weather Underground:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=236&tstamp=200511
cisko: I vote for hurricanes named after computer programming languages. There are certainly enough of them, and it would be hilarious to see weathercritters trying to pronounce or spell them.
Well, hilarious for me, anyway.
I’m guessing hurricane Brainfuck would be out of the question, even though this would have fit better than Katrina, if you ask me.
That is an amusing idea— but how do we restrict it?
What if no compiler were ever written? What about hypothetical or even impossible computer languages?
Hurricanes Bloop and Gloop (points for the reference)
DELTA!
Epsilon seems in reach, now.
After we reach Omega, we could use Hebrew, Arabic, or Cyrillic alphabets. We’ve got lots of letters to use, so “bring ’em on!”