Parts of our coast remain under the national spotlight, but it’s not for good reason. By now, you’ve heard that areas like Carolina Beach and Southport received 15 to 20 inches of rain from a no-named storm.
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My family out there, co-workers and viewers all have the same question. “Why wasn’t this storm named?”
This far inland, we stressed that "regardless of a name, the impacts remain the same." It’s tougher to say that, though, to the folks whose homes and businesses flooded like they’d never seen before (and hopefully will never see again).
Why wasn’t this storm named?
I compare storm systems to apples. They both have cores.
Tropical systems: These have warm cores. These types of storms form over warm ocean waters (at least 80 degrees) and as a result of heat being released by condensation and precipitation.
Non-tropical systems: These have cold cores. The rising motion we see along a temperature boundary results in cooling.
I remember after explaining to my aunt, she replied, "that’s it?"
Yep. That’s it. A technicality is what prevented this storm from becoming Helene.
The National Hurricane Center has to have that criteria before naming a storm. Otherwise, any Nor'easter that slams into New England in the winter and spring would get a name. It's a Catch-22.
We get it, though. It’s confusing when you’re dealing with catastrophic flooding, wind gusts of 50 to 75 mph, storm surge and are under a tropical storm warning.
At that point, you don’t care what core the storm has; it feels like, looks like, sounds like, smells like a tropical storm to everyone going through it.
To the 99.9% of people who don’t have a meteorology degree, you’re thinking, "Just name the thing!"
What the heck is a “potential tropical cyclone?”
The National Hurricane Center began issuing forecasts for Potential Tropical Cyclones a few years ago. This was for instances like this – when a storm was close to land and in the process of becoming tropical. This allowed them to issue a forecast cone, advisories, etc.
It’s meant to be helpful, but there are drawbacks. One of which, is the word, "cyclone."
To meteorologists, we know the word ‘cyclone’ to mean ‘storm.’
To the 99.9% of people who aren’t meteorologists, that term either a) doesn’t make sense to them or b) is only used for hurricanes that happen in the western Pacific.
Would it have made any difference?
Something that’s become increasingly apparent in my decade-long career as a meteorologist is that meteorology is just as much a social science as it is a physical science.
You can have the most accurate forecast in the world (this wasn’t that for parts of the coast), but it’s considered wrong if it doesn’t make sense to people consuming it.
At the same time, we’re also now in an age when the quickness of a stock weather app on a phone takes precedence over the two minutes it may take to watch a local forecast, be it on TV, the WRAL News app, jshu.net or numerous social media platforms.
All that said, people may have prepared differently if they had known that Tropical Storm Helene was coming for their area, rather than Potential Tropical Cyclone 8.
It’s part of why these storms first got names starting in the early 1950s.
You remember Hurricane Floyd, but you wouldn’t if I called it "Storm 6 of 1999." You remember Hurricane Katrina, but you wouldn’t if I called it "Storm 11 of 2005."
There was a forecast for high rain totals, strong wind gusts and storm surge. There was even a tropical storm warning in effect, but did all that get buried?
Did it get missed, because this storm wasn’t named?
Possibly.