Only a few days into Fall, and the Weather Channel has already released names for winter storms. This year’s list begins with Atlas and ends with Zephyr. The list was developed with the help of a Latin class at Bozeman, MT High School. The 26 names will be used in alphabetical order to identify strong winter storms that meet the naming criteria.
Last year, TWC took some heat from local forecasters as well as the National Weather Service for the naming convention, which took the place of the socially engaging, if tragically overused, “Snowmageddon,” “Snowpocalypse,” and “Snotober.”
Veteran meteorologist Bryan Norcross came up with the idea last year. “It’s simply easier to communicate about a complex storm if it has a name, which our naming program last year demonstrated,” says Norcross. “And good communications benefits everyone.”
Weather Channel is part-owned by NBCUniversal, ensuring that NBCU networks and stations will likely adopt the names, even if other news outlets across the country don’t.