Weather Break -- Cyclone Emma

This is a transcript of the Weather Break radio show for Tuesday, March 11, 2008. The program was written by Dr. Jon Schrage.

Last week, the weather across Central Europe made headlines throughout the meteorological community. Perhaps the most significant weather was in the form of the incredibly high winds observed in Germany. Winds were reported up to 136 MPH, and over a foot of snow fell in the Eiffel mountains of Germany. Perhaps you saw the video footage of a Lufthansa airliner trying to land at the airport in Hamburg--if not, we have links to the video and the stories on our web site at weatherbreak.creighton.edu. The plane almost crashed due to strong crosswinds on the runaway and had to pull up at the last second. The strong winds drove the waters of the Atlantic towards the shores of Western Europe in the form of a "storm surge", much like we would see in America during a hurricane. As a result, sea level was about 9 feet above normal along the coast of the Netherlands.

Several of the news stories about this wind storm casually mentioned that this weather event was called "Cyclone Emma". While the storm itself was amazing, this name actually caught our attention here at Weather Break. A cyclone, of course, is just a large area of low pressure with winds that rotate counterclockwise. In the United States, we experience cyclones every few days; if the TV weatherman tells you that a "storm system" is approaching, he usually means a cyclone.

But in the United States, we don't NAME cyclones--we name hurricanes. Tropical meteorologists have been naming hurricanes for more than 50 years now, and it's a good way to keep track of these storms. Everyone remembers famous hurricanes such as Katrina or Andrew, and even if the hurricane isn't particularly strong, the names just help the meteorologists keep the storms straight, since there is often more than one hurricane going on at a given time.

But cyclones are much more common than hurricanes. While the Atlantic ocean might see 9 or 10 named hurricanes or tropical storms in a given year, there will typically be more than 100 cyclones.

So everyone here at Weather Break was surprised to find out that cyclones in Europe DO get named, although the system is not entirely official. The names for European cyclones are assigned by the Institute of Meteorology at the Free University of Berlin. This program maintains lists of names, which get assigned to the cyclones as they form or begin to impact Western Europe.

Perhaps more amazingly, they also assign names to ANTICYCLONES. Anticyclones are areas of high pressure with winds that rotate clockwise. Anticyclones are not severe at all; they are usually associated with fair skies and gentle winds.

Each year, the Free University of Berlin releases lists of about 200 names that will be assigned to cyclones and anticyclone that year. This year, the cyclones are assigned girls' names and the anticyclones are assigned boys' names; next year, the system reverses, so cyclones will get boys' names and anticyclones will get girls' names. The names are in alphabetical order, so the first four cyclones of 2008 in Europe were Anje, Birgitta, Christine, and Dagmar, while the first four anticyclones were Andreas, Bernd, Christfried, and David. They'll go through the alphabet three or four times in 2008 before reversing the roles of girls and boys for 2009.

But what REALLY astonished everyone here at Weather Break is where these names come from. The names are submitted by the public in a type of "adoption" program that the Free University of Berlin calls "Adopt-a-Vortex". For a few hundred dollars, you can have a cyclone or an anticyclone officially named after yourself or your grandchildren or whatever. This system seemed so amazing to us that we're currently setting up an interview with someone at the Free University of Berlin to tell us more about this. Hopefully, we'll have that interview on the show next week.