Hurricane Goldenrod or Alpha?

Don's worried about all the hurricanes. He has a hurricane tracking map icon on the desktop of our computer. He checks it frequently. Last night, he chased me off the computer to check one last time and see if the newest storm had yet been named. It had. Rita is now threatening the southern coast of Florida.

But Don's biggest concern is, what will happen if we have more than four more hurricanes this year? We only have four names left, so we'll run out of assigned names for this year. What then? Hmh.

Apparently, not all letters are chosen for names. Don has a list printed with the names for 2005 through 2009. We noticed that my father's name, Wilfred, is a planned name for 2007. I'd hate to think that we'll have enough hurricanes to reach the W's but, even worse, what if Hurricane Wilfred causes real damage, like Katrina? His name will forever be infamous.

I have a good friend who has a lovely daughter, a Kindergartener this year, whose name is Katrina. She's lovely, full of energy and laughter. She's a precious gift from God and we are all thankful to know her. I was disheartened when Hurricane Katrina hit. I didn't want such an ugly thing associated with this beautiful, sweet child. But, of course, no one who knows Katrina could ever associate her with such a terrible thing. Then, I read someone's blog who wrote about the Hurricane. There was a comment on the Post by someone talking about what a stupid name Katrina was. It was beautiful before the Hurricane was named after it.

So Don frets over the short supply of names left and I fret over 2007's schedule. At least his has a solution. At one of the web sites he went to yesterday, he found a note buried near the bottom of several pages that said if all names have been used for any particular year, and there are additional hurricanes, the National Weather Service will use Greek letters to name the extras, starting with Alpha.

Why do we use real names for Hurricanes, anyway? Why can't we designate them like license plates - CPI -712; or use pet names like Fido or Feefee; what about plant names - Goldenrod or Periwinkle? It seems to me that all those would be less offensive than using the names of REAL people. Unfortunately, the National Weather Service never asked me for my opinion.

We run short on names this year, Don worries about what name will come after Alpha, I worry that 2007 may bring a hurricane named after my father, and the residents of Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisianna try to recover their lives. At least the name Katrina conjures up more than just ugly thoughts for me. I pray the same for the victims left in it's path.