Naming Snow Storms? WTF?

“Titan brings Misery to the Midwest!” announced The Weather Channel,  as Snowpocalypse®™© number 568 rolled through my fair city last year, and we were plagued—yes plagued!—with yet another snow day. Well, it has begun again, but now we've upgraded to Polar Vortex--oooh, very scientific sounding--very "The Next Day After Tomorrow."

And about this emerging weather trend… What fool had the bright idea to start naming snow storms in the first place? It’s ludicrous. Hurricanes—yes; it’s an age old tradition circa 1200 B.C. (unverified). They are few, mighty, and female—until recently, of course, when certain parties of the male persuasion started screaming discrimination. Really? The ocean is female, people, and women have cramps—enough said! And Typhoons—though I’m certainly no scholar on the subject, and I don’t speak any Asian languages that I’m aware of, I have to wonder about their names, as well. I mean, since they are pretty odd sounding and Typhoons do spin in the opposite direction, is it not possible that theirs aren’t just backward spellings of Ethel or Agnes or whatever?

Where will this end, I demand to know.  Since the weather people have already taken liberties with tradition, I’m also wondering if this spring’s crop of tornadoes will have names like Courtney or Candy Lou or Tinkerbelle…and what if it rains? “I shall name this pop-up thundershower Annabelle, and I shall love it and squeeze it and pet it…” (reference: Elmer Fudd). And earthquakes! Now there’s something I can get behind. They deserve names like Hercules or Trojan—no that one should be reserved for an extra powerful volcanic eruption, don’t you think? And Tsunamis? Nothing says seismic orgasmic pulsing ripples like a good Brad or Johnny or Orlando—ahh… but I digress.

According to physicists, who typically score higher on graduate school entrance exams than most, summer—I mean, "global warming", is officially over, and we should prepare for the onslaught of nuclear winter and the very real possibility that we'll be hurled into another minor ice age in which humans are ill-equipped to survive (or so say the anthropologists who have clearly never heard of The North Face or Uggs). So slather your body with factor 20 million sunscreen because of the frigging hole in the Ozone layer—we do still have one of those, don’t we??--and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Scornfully yours,

~VG

---