Weather Agency Considers ‘Typhoon Devastation’, ‘Typhoon Please Evacuate’, and ‘Typhoon We Mean It This Time’

The Typhoon Name Problem: When ‘Ofel’ Does Not Convey Appropriate Urgency

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration is studying a proposal to revise the country’s tropical cyclone naming convention after internal research found that typhoon names drawn from a pre-approved list of traditional Filipino names do not, by themselves, communicate the level of danger that the named storms represent, particularly when the name selected is one that the public associates with a friendly neighbour, a beloved uncle, or a character from a noontime variety show.

‘The science does not change based on the name,’ said PAGASA director Dr. Vicente Salamanca. ‘Typhoon Ofel with sustained winds of two hundred kilometres per hour and a storm surge of six metres is just as dangerous as a hypothetical typhoon called Typhoon Catastrophe with the same parameters. But we have observed that public compliance with evacuation orders varies inversely with how familiar and friendly the storm’s name sounds. Nobody evacuates from Ofel. Ofel sounds like someone’s lola. People do not run from their lola.’

Proposed Alternatives

The internal study, a copy of which was obtained by ManilaNews.PH, proposes three alternative naming frameworks. The first would append the storm’s maximum wind speed to the name — ‘Typhoon Ofel-200kph’ — to provide context. The second would introduce a severity tier into the name itself, with storms above Category 4 receiving names from a separate list described as ‘names that convey gravitas,’ tentatively including Calixto, Hermenegildo, and Victoriana. The third option, proposed by a junior meteorologist in a footnote that the director described as ‘not what I asked for but not wrong,’ would name the storms ‘Typhoon Please Leave Now 1 through 20.’

Public Response

‘I evacuated for Typhoon Yolanda,’ said Tacloban resident Elena Corpuz, fifty-five, referring to the 2013 super typhoon known internationally as Haiyan that killed over six thousand people in the Philippines. ‘I know people who did not evacuate because they did not think it would be that bad. Yolanda is also a friendly name. I think the name is less important than the number of times officials say please leave before they stop saying please.’

PAGASA typhoon advisories at PAGASA. Comedy: NewsThump.

SOURCE: http://prat.UK