Skip to main content

How Cyclone Hudhud got its name

Nomenclature of Cyclones
This is the thing i am sure you didn't know earlier.Almost everyone understands what does a cyclone mean But what you don't know is that there is a committee/organisation which takes care of the names given to these disastrous happening.And the most interesting thing is that the name which is to be given to a cyclone must not hurt someone's feelings and must be remembered easily.


Did you know Cyclone Hudhud, expected to hit India's south-eastern coast on Sunday afternoon, was "born" in Oman?
Hudhud in Visakhapatnam


We are talking about the name of the cyclone, not the storm itself. The cyclone itself originated in the north Andaman sea in the Bay of Bengal and is now hurtling towards Andhra Pradesh and Orissa states.
The name Hudhud in Arabic refers to the Hoopoe bird.

Hurricanes and tropical cyclones in the Atlantic have had their own names since 1953, a convention begun by Miami's National Hurricane Centre and maintained and updated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a Geneva-based agency of the United Nations.
But naming came to South Asia and the Middle East only recently.
It was just too controversial to do the same around the North Indian Ocean
For years cyclones that originated in the north Indian ocean were anonymous affairs.
In the days before 2004, cyclones in the North Indian ocean were nameless

One of the reasons, according to Dr M Mahapatra, who heads India's cyclone warning centre, was that in an "ethnically diverse region we needed to be very careful and neutral in picking up the names so that it did not hurt the sentiments of people".
But finally in 2004 they clubbed together and agreed on their favourite names
That was when an international panel on tropical cyclones led by the WMO sat down and decided to name their cyclones as a committee in the spirit of co-operation and consensus.
Eight countries - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Sri Lanka and Thailand - took part. They came up with a list of 64 names- eight names from each country - for upcoming cyclones.
The list goes alphabetically, according to each country. The last cyclone in the region was Nanauk in June, a name contributed by Myanmar.
Names can be suggested by the general public in the member country or by the government. India, for example, welcomes suggestions on the condition that the name must be "short and readily understood when broadcast, not culturally sensitive and not convey some unintended and potentially inflammatory meaning".
"A storm causes so much death and destruction that its name is considered for retirement and hence is not used repeatedly," a statement by India's weather office says.
So this time, following the alphabetical order, it is Oman's turn
Last year, Phailin, the name for a massive cyclone which battered India's south-eastern coast and led to the evacuation of more than 500,000 people, was provided by Thailand. Some of the Indian names in the queue are the more prosaic Megh (Cloud), Sagar (Ocean) and Vayu (Wind).
The Hudhud, or hoopoe bird, is an exotic creature noticed for its distinctive crown of feathers and is widespread in Europe, Asia and North Africa.
Next time a cyclone hits the region, it's Pakistan's turn to give it a name
It will be called Nilofar. Last time Pakistan named a cyclone was Nilam in November 2012.
The names will not dry up anytime soon. Dr Mahapatra says Hudhud is possibly the 34th name of the list, which means there are 30 more in the queue. The panel of cyclone experts meets every year, and they will be replenishing the list whenever the need arises.
It's not that the list of 64 names has been without controversy
Cyclone Mahasen, which hit in 2013 and was named by Sri Lanka, was changed to Viyaru after protests by nationalists and officials in Sri Lanka. They said Mahasen was a king who had brought peace and prosperity to the island, and it was wrong to name a calamity after him.
Nevertheless, it is important to name cyclones, say experts
A name helps people and the media to identify each cyclone and become more aware of its implications. It also does not confuse people if there is more than one tropical cyclone brewing in the region.
And these cyclones often prove to be deadly - their names resonate for a very long time.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Comment on articles for more info.

Popular posts from this blog

Image Search Engine Using Python

Images provide a lot more information than audio or text. Image processing is the prime field of research for robotics as well as search engines. In this article we will explore the concept of finding similarity between digital images using python. Then we will use our program to find top 10 search results inside a dataset of images for a given picture. It won't be as good as google's search engine because of the technique we will be using to find similarity between images. But what we are going to make will be pretty cool. So lets start. Setting up the Environment Our Algorithm How the code looks Lets build the GUI Additional Techniques Setting up the Environment The code we are going to write requires a few tools which we need to install first. I will try to be as precise as i can and if you get stuck into installing some tool then you can drop a comment below and i will help you sort out the problem. So here are the tools and the steps to install
18 comments
Read more

Understanding Python Decorators

If you have ever wondered what those @something mean above a python function or method then you are going to have your answers now. This @something line of code is actually called a decorator. I have red from various articles about them but some of them were not able to clarify the concept of a decorator and what we can achieve with them. So in this post we'll learn a lot about python decorators. Here is a list of topics we'll be covering. What is python decorator Understanding the concept Multiple decorators on same function class method decorator Where can we use decorators What is python decorator A python decorator is nothing but a function which accepts your given function as a parameter and returns a replacement function. So its like something this def decorator(your_func): def replacement(your_func_args): #do some other work return replacement @decorator your_func(your_func_args): #your_func code Now when your_func gets called then
1 comment
Read more

Cordova viewport problem solved

Include the viewport settings in Cordova If you are facing the auto zooming problem of cordova then go read on the full article. Cordova actually ignores the viewport meta tag which causes the pixel density problem. So we need to tell cordova that viewport tag is equally important as other tags. To do this, we need to add some code to a file which is specify in the article. Corodva messes with pixels If you are using the latest cordova version or creating the cordova app for latest android versions then you may have faced the zoom malfunctioning.I also faced it when creating an app. Many of you may have already searched the web and found the answer of changing the meta tag attributes to get it working. But adding target-densitydpi=medium-dpi does not solve the problem for latest android versions. It may work for gingerbread but not for kitkat and others. So the final solution which i found was one of the stackexchange answer but rarely found. So i am gonna two things here, i
5 comments
Read more