The "She's A Real Hurricane!" Story

The formation of Hurricane Irma.

It was an ordinary day.  August 27, 2017 and a tropical wave moved off the west African coast.  Three days later near the Cape Verde Islands that tropical wave turned into Hurricane Irma.  Within 24 hours it had become a Category 2 hurricane.  Wasn't long before it intensified and became a Category 3 hurricane or what is known as a major hurricane.  Due to a series of eyewall replacement cycles, the storm fluctuated between a 2 and 3 for the next several days.  Then, on September 4, Irma resumed intensifying, becoming a Category 5 by the end of the next day and two days later reached its peak intensity of 185 mph which made it the strongest storm of 2017.  Another eyewall caused it to recede to a Category 4, but it regained steam and once again became a number 5 before making landfall in Cuba.  Along the way it caused catastrophic damage in Barbuda, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, Angulla and the US Virgin Islands.  It caused close to 150 deaths along its path with devastation so intense that some of those islands will never fully recover from the damage.  Sint Maarten/St. Martin, the island that Carol and I have so warmly call our second home, could be one of those islands.    Irma was truly a Hurricane Queen.  But, why was this hurricane known as Irma.  Seems that years ago powerful storms were given arbitrary names.  An Atlantic storm that ripped the mast off a boat named Antje became known as Hurricane Antje.  Then, in the mid-1990s storms were all given female names.  Why?  I don't want to offer a reason, but I did read about a novel in which a meteorologist named storms after his ex-girlfriends.  Then, after years of feminist advocacy in favor of male names, a more efficient system was devised and in 1979 names from a pre-designed alphabetical list with both male and female names was used.  The first storm to occur in a year would be assigned a name beginning with A.  But, I thought I would throw this issue into the mix.  Seems that gender bias still exists since, according to a 2014 study, hurricanes named for women don't seem to be as threatening to people so they don't prepare for them as much as hurricanes with men's names.  Ironically, storms in the past few year have proven just the opposite.  Irma would be the most recent to prove the study correct.  No matter what the name and in what order the names are assigned, hurricanes can be deadly and should all be taken with the same amount of concern.  Take it from those affected by Irma!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.