In the 1950s, in a nod to the maritime tradition of naming ships after women, the NWS started naming hurricanes after women. It had nothing to do with increasing public awareness of how destructive hurricanes can be. It was mostly to improve communication among ships, airplanes, and meteorological stations, which in the past had used mainly longitude and latitude to define storms. But naming storms after women was not such a bright idea. In the 1960s, women were not happy with the gendered and misogynistic way in which female-named hurricanes were described as “witches,” “capricious,”
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