Here’s a recipe for a maelstrom in a teacup

In this time of extreme weather conditions across the globe, the official US practice of naming hurricanes obviously does not cut it any more. After all, if Katrina conjures up specific images of watery destruction, why should winter storms that white-out vast swathes be left anonymous, or simply identified as, say, “the Armistice Day Blizzard”?

It is not surprising, therefore, that The Weather Channel’s gambit of naming even blizzards hitting the US has crossed the Atlantic, with ‘Jonas’ sweeping in with anthropomorphic menace. Indeed, the UK has also invited people to suggest names for storms originating nearer home as well, so the trend is fairly clear.

So far, however, that practice has not spread further to Europe — probably because destructive American storms dissipate before hitting the continent. However, with its own complement of extreme bad weather ratcheting up, European nations should consider compiling a list of acceptable names for these vaporous villains of the winter months.

India and its neighbours collaborate on names for weather systems arising both in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, and typhoons hitting Asian countries further to the east are also routinely named. It may be time now, perhaps, for those nations in the north impacted by similar winter storms to start on lists of their own.