Editor’s Note for Tuesday, September 13, 2022

My thoughts today:

Hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean are given names by the World Meteorological Organization. In 1953, when the practice was first started, the names were taken from the saint of the day of the storm on the Catholic liturgical calendar, but now it uses a variety of common English men’s and women’s names.

In the Pacific Ocean, the Japan Meteorological Agency’s typhoon center assigns names to cyclones and typhoons on behalf of the World Meteorological Organization, using a list of names submitted by various Pacific countries and regions. (Tropical cyclones or tropical storms are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific, but they are the exact same meteorological phenomenon.)

The latest tropical storm that is hitting China as I type this is Typhoon Muifa, whose name was suggested by Macau. Muifa is a Cantonese rendering of the Chinese word for ume, or plum blossom (梅花 méihuā).

Our word of the day is Typhoon Muifa (颱風梅花 táifēng méihuā).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief