Limbaugh doesn’t deserve flag honor
It’s bad enough that Gov. Ron DeSantis is proposing a laundry list of changes to Florida election law to correct a problem that doesn’t exist (“DeSantis proposes election restrictions,” Feb. 20), but ordering state flags to be lowered to half-staff in order to honor the passing of Rush Limbaugh is the last straw.
In issuing the order, DeSantis described the recently departed Limbaugh to be “one of our own.” I don’t know who he is including in the proverbial our, but to honor a man whose career was based on a philosophy of hate, lies and just plain meanness is beyond the pale. If DeSantis wants to mourn the passing of one of his personal heroes, let him do it in private and not subject the decent residents of Florida to his foolishness.
Gregory Cerkiewicz Windermere
Andrew, Katrina and Michael — chances are if you’re a Floridian, reading these names conjures memories of headlines featuring devastating hurricanes.
After all, the whole point of naming something is to remember it.
Hurricanes are such a normal part of the tropics season that it can be easy to forget that the modern convention of naming hurricanes started not long ago.
The National Hurricane Center began using a naming system to designate storms with maximum sustained winds of 39 mph or more in the Atlantic Ocean in 1979.
That followed on the heels of the World Meteorological Organization’s system that began one year earlier for storms in the Pacific. The WMO came up with six years’ worth of predetermined lists of alternating male and female names in an alphabetic order.
But even the WMO wasn’t the first naming system ever used.
Early records show storms were first designated by the names of Roman Catholic saints, marrying the saints’ feast days to the day a storm happened to make landfall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. One such example occurred July 26, 1825 when Hurricane Santa Ana hit Puerto Rico. NOAA records show the storm, named for the patron saint known for being the mother of Mary, struck the area with “exceptional violence.”
Similar examples include two different San Felipes, which hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 13 in both 1876 and 1928.
Before the end of the 19th century, records show an Australian meteorologist began naming hurricanes after women. The practice of doing so was emulated during World War II among forecasters in the U.S. Army and Navy who plotted the movements of storms over wide expanses of the Pacific Ocean, according to the
NOAA.
In 1950, the U.S. began using a phonetic alphabet naming system, which would repeat annually. The list started with Able, Baker and Charlie. However, this system only lasted two years because of confusion and was replaced. In 1953, a new, international phonetic alphabet list was introduced. The U.S., however, instead began to use female names for storms, and that lasted through 1978.
The current naming scheme uses six different lists that rotate every year. At the end of six years, the cycle begins again with the first list of names. It’s paired with a retirement system, decided by the WMO, when a storm is so deadly or costly that future use of the name would be considered inappropriate or insensitive.
The six-year list cycle means 2021 will be using the same list from 2015. The names from 2020 will be recycled in 2027, although some names on the list could be
taken away during the WMO’s spring meeting.
The storm names for the 2021 season as listed by the NHC: Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Elsa, Fred, Grace, Henri, Ida, Julian, Kate, Larry, Mindy, Nicholas, Odette, Peter, Rose, Sam, Teresa, Victor and Wanda.
Two names on this list are new, as Elsa and Julian replaced storm names Erika and Joaquin from 2015, the NHC records show.
Tropical Storm Erika was responsible for 30 direct deaths and over 500 people left homeless in Dominica. Later that year, Category 4 Hurricane Joaquin brought devastation to the southeastern portion of the Bahamas causing $60 million worth of damages. A total of 34 people were killed by the storm in both the Bahamas and Haiti.
Although Joaquin did not make landfall in Florida it did make an impact. A U.S. flagged cargo ship, El Faro, departed from a Jacksonville port on Sept. 29 and was bound to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The ship sailed east and was caught in Joaquin’s winds. The ship went missing and a search for survivors turned up very little. One deceased crewmember was found. The rest of the 33-member crew, which included 28 Americans and five Polish, are presumed dead. The ship was eventually found 15,000 feet below sea level on Oct. 31.