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Global Guide to Tropical Cyclone Forecasting:
Chapter 9: Ready Reckoner

9.9 TRIVIA CORNER

Hurricane Rubble: Surge and waves from Hurricane Bebe at Funafuti Atoll (8^oS, 179^oE) during 21 October, 1972 raised a permanent rubble rampart 3.5 m high, 37 m wide and 18 km long (Maragos et al., 1973).

Hot Air: A localised region of extremely warm stratospheric air with 240 hPa temperature anomaly of 18^o attained over a distance of 13 km at the end of a cloud band outside the eye of Tropical Cyclone Kerry, February 1979, Coral Sea (Holland et al., 1984); measured by 747 with meteorologist in the cockpit, caused a major scare as the jet engines lost substantial power; in a similar incident in Western Australia a jet descended to 3 km altitude before regaining engine power.

Best Ship Observations: Caught in a typhoon in the western North Pacific during 26 September 1935, officers of the Japanese Imperial Navy collected the first, and possibly still the most comprehensive set of observations of the surface structure of a tropical cyclone (Arakawa and Suda, 1953).

Best Book Title: "An Attempt To Develop The Law of Storms By Means of Facts, Arranged According To Place and Time; and Hence To Point Out A Cause For The Variable Winds With The View To Practical Use In Navigation" (Reid, 1838).

Meteorology: This word seems to have been introduced to the language by Rear Admiral FitzRoy (1862), who begged his readers to accept the "abbreviation" from the then accepted meteorologic or meteorological.

Cyclone=Coiled Snake: Piddington (1855) first coined the term cyclone based on the Greek word , or coil of a snake, which indicated the characteristic circular and centripetal air flow.

Typhoon=Big Wind: The derivative of the word typhoon seems to have arisen from very appropriate Mandarin word t'ai fung for great wind.

Hurricane=Angry God: The derivative of the word hurricane comes from Huracan, or "God of Evil" used by the Central American Tainos tribe (Anthes, 1982).

Cock-Eyed Bobs: Contrary to popular belief, tropical cyclones are not referred to as Willy Willys in Australia. This name refers to dust devils. However, old timers on the Australian west coast often used the colourful name Cock-Eyed Bob to refer to severe tropical cyclones.

Divine Wind: In the 13 th century, a Mongol fleet, possibly the largest fleet ever assembled up to that time, was destroyed by a typhoon on its way to what would have been a successful invasion of Japan. This great fortune for Japan gave rise to the term kamikaze, for Divine Wind.

Friend or Foe: Clement Wragge, the Australian forecaster who started the convention of naming tropical cyclones, occasionally named a particularly severe one after politicians with whom he was displeased.

Coincidences?: The TCM-90 Field experiment was initiated following a less than good series of forecasts for Typhoon Abby; the Project Manager was Bob Abbey. The Director of the field experiment in Guam was Russ Elsberry; several months later Guam was badly damaged by Supertyphoon Russ.

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