Hassan duped by silly winter storm naming fad
Gov. Maggie Hassan is pushing a new hashtag on Twitter, #NemoNH, to encourage safety during this weekend’s snowstorm:
@nhpatch please encourage your sites to use #NemoNH tag, thank you
— Gov. Maggie Hassan (@GovernorHassan) February 8, 2013
Well, it turns out the Governor has been duped by a clever corporate marketing ploy, according to the Washington Post:
See, the Weather Channel thinks names aren’t just for your well-defined tropical systems like hurricanes and cyclones any more. And it isn’t waiting for the National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center — the official namer of tropical storms — to start naming this winter’s blizzards and such. In a confluence of marketing hot air and a ridge of cool calculation, the cable channel has started pumping out its own storm names.
So, it was Freyr the other day (and Athena, Brutus, Caesar, Draco and Euclid before that). The channel says it will name each subsequent storm in alphabetical succession, until we get to Khan, Q, Yogi and Xerxes, among others. Weather permitting, of course.