Meteorologists didn't know how to name cyclones. So they relied on their wives and girlfriends

Cyclone Arnab is starting to bear down on parts of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. It is forecast to make landfall between Bapatla and Visakhapatnam in the early hours of October 28. Sustained wind speeds could reach 115 to 125 km/hr, and gusts are expected to touch 140 km/hr. Evacuations are being carried out, and disaster-response teams have been deployed.

Arnab (or Ornab), was the name put forward by Bangladesh. Today, storms are named using a systematic method across the world. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) coordinate this practice. Countries contribute to the names list, which was last updated in 2020. It includes both male and female names.

Only female names for storms

However, there was a time when cyclones were named only after women. For 26 years after the process of naming storms was started by the US National Weather Service in 1953, storms only had female names. It wasn't until 47 years ago that storms started getting male names. Way before all this, during the Second World War, there was no process to give storms names. So the United States Army Air Corps and meteorologists in the Navy simply chose the names of their wives and girlfriends for hurricanes and cyclones.

Also Read: Cyclone Arnab intensifies into very severe cyclonic storm, red alert in Andhra Pradesh

Meteorologist Clement Wragge is believed to be the one who started streamlining the process of naming cyclones in the 1980s. But he was also quite biased against women when it came to the naming process. He started with the Greek alphabet, and then characters from Greek and Roman mythology. Later, he started picking female names and names of politicians, mostly the ones he did not like.

The method has since been refined. Six Regional Specialised Meteorological Centres (RSMC) and five regional Tropical Cyclone Warning Centres in the world monitor storms and weather disturbances. They name the cyclones and issue advisories. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) is one of them. In the North Indian Ocean basin, 13 countries have been given rights to name storms: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, UAE and Yemen.

But they can't just pick a name on a whim, as they need to adhere to strict guidelines. The names cannot be politically or culturally motivated. They have to be non-offensive, simple and can only have eight letters.