Experts began to humanize hurricanes with names back in the late 1940s for a variety of reasons, which include: improving communications between forecasters and the public when forecasts, watches, and warnings are issued; to reduce confusion about what storm is being described, as more than one can occur in the same region at the same time; and humanizing a powerful weather system — in this case by tying it to Halloween — can encourage people to prepare for it. This year meteorologists have stepped things up a notch by renaming Hurricane Sandy as Frankenstorm because of the growing concern this beast has all the makings of a Perfect Storm (similar to the one which occurred in 1991). This is because the hurricane is on track to make landfall somewhere between Atlantic City and New York City around 2am early Tuesday morning where it will merge with a powerful Nor’easter, cold winds from Canada, a bizarre jet stream pattern, and a full moon. This collection of weather events are adding up to what even longtime meteorologists are calling a “historic” weather event that has never been seen before in the modern era of weather tracking. Tens of millions of people from Virginia to Maine, from Toronto to Halifax, are in store for something the likes of which is unprecedented.
