Bill Karins, Meteorologist

Naming Subtropical Storms adds to the hype machine. Make it stop!

You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game. I learned that lesson in tee ball on my first day when I ran to third base instead of first. I didn’t like it but I was wrong. So why after decades of record keeping did the National Hurricane Center decide to start naming Subtropical Storms in 2002?

In case you don’t yet see the importance of this issue let me expand. Personally, I don’t care if they start naming every tropical wave. I can handle it and explain it on-air but the fast-paced media world we live in can’t. The message will not be explained properly and the public will be misled which will in turn create fear.

I’ve already had a number of people I don’t know asking me about this amazingly active hurricane season we just started on June 1st. The problem is, it hasn’t been amazing but the public certainly thinks so and I don’t blame them. Two named storms by the first day of the hurricane season certainly sounds unusual and in the media world they call a fact like this sexy. A sexy fact always makes for a great headline and headlines tend to be very convincing.

I’d love to tell the mass media, hey they started naming subtropical storms in 2002 so put an asterisk next to that headline. That’s not going to happen because the mass media loves a sexy headline. As a result you the customer walk away with the perception that the hurricane season and future seasons will be worse than they really are.

Since I and nobody else can control the media my only course of action is to ask the National Hurricane Center to reconsider the naming of Subtropical storms. I’m a numbers guy and I love the purity of historical numbers. So let’s just call Subtropical storms by what they are… Subtropical Storms.