Are People Less Afraid Of Hurricanes With Female Names Than Those With Male Names? Spoiler: Probably Not

Satellite view of Hurricane Michael roaring ashore in
the Florida Panhandle in 2018.

People have some strange ideas about how hurricanes "should" be named, apparently.   

At least one probably dubious study, conducted more than a decade ago, suggests that people are less scared of hurricanes with female names than ones with male names. 

I think this is misogynistic, but I don't know if the study is that way, people are that way, or I'm that way for even paying attention to the story.

It's relevant now, because we're entering the peak of hurricane season. Lots of tropical storm and hurricane names will be thrown at you. Just in the past week, we've had Emily, Franklin, Gert and Harold in the Atlantic Ocean and Hilary on the West Coast. 

Anyway, according to a 2014 study from frankly pompous sounding Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences. :

"Do people judge hurricane risk in the context of gender-based expectations? We see more than six decades of death rates from US. hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents; preparedness to take protective action. This finding indicates an unfortunate and unintended consequence of the gendered naming of hurricanes, with important implications for policymakers, media practitioners and the general public concerning hurricane communication and preparedness."  

I don't know how accurate all that is, but it was done by scientists, so I hope they know what they're doing. But maybe not. Apparently a lot of people never  bought that 2014 study, and there was plenty of pushback on that study from other scientists.  More on that in a bit. 

HURRICANE NAMES, BOYS AND GIRLS

Prior to 1953, the most memorable hurricanes were named after the region they hit, or the effects they had. Think Great New England Hurricane of 1938, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which claimed something like 6,000 lives, and the Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928, which claimed 3,000 lives.

The whole point of naming hurricanes with names of people was to avoid confusion, especially when a few tropical storms or hurricanes were buzzing around at the same time.

According to NOAA:

"Over time, it was learned that the use of short, easily remembered names in written as well as spoken communications is quicker and reduces confusion when two or more tropical storms occur at the same time. In the past, confusion and false rumors resulted when storm advisories broadcast from radio stations were mistaken for warnings concerning an entirely different storm located hundreds of miles away."

In 1978, they started with male names with Pacific Ocean hurricanes and followed up with men's names a year later in the Atlantic Ocean. 

I'm not sure why hurricanes were named after women, but it was maritime tradition that ocean-related stuff was referred to.

I found a great 2021 article from television station WMC in Memphis on this: 

"When the storms took on female names many weathermen began talking about them as if they were actual women. Some uses sexist cliches to describe the behavior of a storm. Many female meteorologists and feminist activists took offense."

I can't blame these women. I have vague memories from my youth in which hurricanes with female names were nicknamed with horribly sexist language. Women's Media Center had this take on naming hurricanes after women in a 2021 article: 

"'Weather Men Insist Storms Are Feminine," blared a New York Tines headline in 1972, Because men often considered women unpredictable, vengeful, or generally stormy, the men at the U.S. Weather Bureau were myopic in their decision to continue using only feminine names. (Aka, they were entirely predicable.)

As late as 1977, the Houston Post ran an editorial that seriously asserted that calling hurricanes by the names of men would not be as effective as the existing evocation of shrews. 'It's doubtful that a National Hurricane Center bulletin that Tropical Storm Al had formed in the Gulf or Hurricane Jake was threatening the Texas Coast would make us run for cover quite as fast."

Which brings us back to that 2014 study, which asserts just the opposite of that 1977 Houston Post editorial. Remember, the study alleged that hurricanes named after women are less deadly than those named after guys. 

Further analysis of the 2014 study poked lots of holes in it.  For example, only a few hurricanes kill lots of people and it only takes one to throw the results out. For instance, if you removed 2012's Hurricane Sandy from that study, the results become the opposite of what that publication concluded.  

Anecdotally, there have been some horrible hurricanes with wimpy names that were super deadly. For instance, Hurricane Fifi killed about 9,000 people in Honduras back in 1974. Hurricane Flora in 1963 killed 8,000 or so people in Haiti and Cuba. 

Then again Mitch sounds like a friendly guy's name, but that storm killed more than 9,000 people in Nicaragua and Honduras. 

The first year they started naming hurricanes with traditionally male names was in 1979. Two of the storms that year, David and Frederic, turned out to be especially deadly and damaging.  

The following is just coincidence, but it seems like when the Powers That Be make a change in how hurricanes are names, New England pays the price. 

The year after they started naming hurricanes with womens' names, Hurricanes Carol, Edna and Hazel caused damage in New England in 1954. Hurricanes Connie and Diane in 1955 caused additional New England destruction. 

In 1979 when men's names were introduced, the remnants of Hurricanes David and Frederic caused damage in Vermont.

The bottom line is, if you're at a vulnerable coastal spot and they tell you to evacuate because an approaching hurricane has a 15-foot storm surge and 150 mph winds, if you had a lick of sense, you'd flee inland.  

It doesn't matter if that hurricane is named "Cute Cuddly Teddy Bear" or "It Will Kill Everyone."  Although sometimes watching human behavior doesn't support it, I think most people no longer care what the hurricane's name is.