Posted 11/29/2007 05:27:00 PM by Douglas

More proof that TV weather, specifically hurricane weather, is intended to scare the crap out of old people.

With another hurricane season set to end this Friday, a controversy is brewing over decisions of the National Hurricane Center to designate several borderline systems as tropical storms.

Some meteorologists, including former hurricane center director Neil Frank, say as many as six of this year's 14 named tropical systems might have failed in earlier decades to earn "named storm" status.

"They seem to be naming storms a lot more than they used to," said Frank, who directed the hurricane center from 1974 to 1987 and is now chief meteorologist for KHOU-TV. "This year, I would put at least four storms in a very questionable category, and maybe even six."

Most of the storms in question briefly had tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph. But their central pressure — another measure of intensity — suggested they actually remained depressions or were non-tropical systems.

What?!? They're blowing shit out of proportion just to justify my paying out the scrotum for my insurance? NO!!!!! Why ever would they do that?

The number of a season's named storms forms the foundation of historical records used to determine trends in hurricane activity. Insurance companies use these trends to set homeowners' rates. And such information is vital to scientists trying to determine whether global warming has had a measurable impact on hurricane activity.

Forecasters at the hurricane center deny there's any inconsistency in the practice of naming tropical storms.

I hate it when I agree with someone who drinks more than I do, but Dr. Frank is right on this one. Check out the 2007 Hurricane Season. Andrea, Erin, Ingrid, Jerry and Melissa are five named storms that never got above 40 knots. You know what we call a 40 knot wind on the barren steppe of West Texas where I'm from?? Tuesday! Yet these bastards want to use this to milk more money out of me for my home's insurance. I think for every "named" storm that doesn't reach at least, oh, I don't know, 50 knots, the head of the NHC loses a finger.