Greek Gods, Roman Emperors, and Snow

The Weather Channel, in their infinite wisdom – or is it a push to boost ratings? – has taken to naming winter storms this year. Apparently they decided if it’s good enough for hurricanes, then by golly, it’s good enough for snowstorms, too!

I have ridiculed the names given to hurricanes in the past, arguing that they rarely conveyed the powerful strength associated with these cyclones. Sandy may have been a monster of a storm, but she’ll always be the fair-cheeked Australian lass with a voice like honey from Grease to me. After seeing the list of names for the 2012-13 crop of winter storms, I thought, finally – these guys got it right! For the most part, anyway.

It’s a dumb idea to begin with, and the National Weather Service’s official stance is “we refuse to assign names to winter storms.” They have, in fact, forbidden their forecasters from referring to the storms by name. Secondly, what are the official qualifications for becoming a named storm? Who decides this? Does the president of The Weather Channel make the call? That’s an awful lot of power for one man to wield. Why should he get to say that a blizzard in the Midwest is bad enough to receive a name, but the windstorm on the Oregon coast will simply be referred to as “the windstorm on the Oregon coast”? There are going to be bruised feelings, people crying foul, claiming the system is rigged to work against them. That’s the last thing we need after the election! But I get it…I do. If my car is damaged by hail, I’ll find a lot more satisfaction in shouting, “Damn you, Magnus! Damn you to hell!” than in cursing, “You miserable but generic frozen precipitation!”

If Fargo gets a named storm (and let’s face it – they’ll probably get two or three this winter, the lucky bastards), then I want one too, dammit. And how about those names?

The Northeast has already dealt with Athena. I didn’t mind that one too much. It reminded me of a song by The Who. Which one? “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

OK, I kid. It reminded me of “Athena.”

By and large, the names make sense. There are several mythological gods of sky and thunder (Jove, Orko, Ukko and Zeus). I see what the TWC guys were doing there. Clever, fellas. But then there’s Freyr, a Norse pagan god associated with “sunshine and fair weather.” They sort of blew it with that one, unless their point was irony.

Brutus and Caesar. The weather guys have an odd fascination with the Roman Empire, as evidenced by these names. Caesar was a dictator, Brutus was his onetime friend and eventual assassin. I guess since they were both vengeful and murderous, these are badass storm names. Not so badass? Virgil. Sounds like a nebbish Woody Allen character. Virgil was a popular poet in ancient Rome. They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but I’d fear Caesar’s blade much more than Virgil’s iambic pentameter.

How they came up with these names is Greek to me. And also, to the guys at TWC, who turned to ancient Greece for inspiration more than once. Euclid was a Greek mathematician known as “the father of Geometry,” and Plato was a famous Greek philosopher. Both had more brains than brawn so they don’t particularly instill fear in the heart, though Geometry absolutely kicked my ass in high school. Draco was a lawyer in Athens, and we know how universally despised attorneys are. Bonus points because it makes me think of that Malfoy character in the Harry Potter series, a downright wicked little prick. Plus, a really bad storm might cause a Quidditch tournament to be delayed.

When I first saw Khan I thought they were referring to the villain from Star Trek, the dude who killed Spock, and I thought, how appropriate – Ricardo Montalban was a monster! Then I realized it’s probably a reference to Genghis Khan, the Mongolian emperor who massacred civilians by the thousands. He was a big meanie, too.

Given TWC’s obsession with mythology, I’m assuming Helen refers to Helen of Troy and not, say, Helen Keller. Helen was “the most beautiful thing on the dark earth” and her abduction* caused a war that led to the launching of a thousand ships and much death and destruction. (*I put an asterisk here because in the movie Troy she seemed to go along with Paris pretty readily. Of course, Paris was played by Brad Pitt, and there are probably a lot of women who would consider that choice a no-brainer. Historic details are sketchy here).

Not all the names were derived from mythological gods and rulers. When I hear Gandolf, I picture the wizard from Lord of the Rings. You can bet your ass there’s going to be some old guy with long hair and a scraggly beard shouting “you shall not pass!” as the clouds begin to thicken. Then, as the storm rolls in, he’ll change his tune and warn us all to “run, you fools.”

I suppose Nemo is a literary reference to the captain in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, but it forever reminds me of a cartoon fish. Everybody will be out looking for this storm, but unable to find it. Iago is a fictional character in Shakespeare’s Othello. As this storm threatens, I can picture newscasters going, “Thou doth make haste before thy storm approacheth.”

Yo, Adrian! Rocky is coming, and it looks like it’s going to pummel the city, knocking out power and flattening trees in its wake. If it’s windy, things are “gonna fly now.” (It would be particularly fitting if this storm struck Philadelphia).

I find it humorous that they came up with a name for X (Xerxes) but apparently just gave up when they reached Q.

Hey there, Boo Boo! Yogi is probably the least threatening name on here, but it’ll probably wreak havoc in Jellystone Park.

I worry about the stupidest things sometimes. Like, what if it’s a brutal winter and there are more than 26 storms worthy of names? Will they recycle them? Will we get a Brutus II or a Caesar Junior? Or will they consult their mythology and history books and literature and movie references and come up with a whole new slew of names like Prometheus and Nero and Frodo and Rambo? Inquiring minds are dying to know.

What do you think about this whole idea of naming winter storms? Is there a name you’d love to see?

Related articles

• Why Are Winter Storms Suddenly Getting Named? (mentalfloss.com)
• Weather Service Won’t Recognize Winter Storm ‘Athena’ By Name (huffingtonpost.com)