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When Harvey met Irma

When Harvey met Irma in the 1940s, Harvey was smitten.

When Harvey met Irma

Illustration: Vishu Verma



Harvinder Khetal

When Harvey met Irma in the 1940s, Harvey was smitten. And, it was not long before he had won over Irma, then in school. Today, as 104-year-old Harvey Schluter and his 93-year-old wife Irma look back on their 75 years of togetherness and married life, the coincidence of two storms bearing their names hitting the USA together comes across as one of the most marvelous incidents of their eventful lives spanning a century. A New York Times story published last week on the couple was indeed fascinating. While there may be many a Sandy or a Katrina or a Irene or a Rita or an Andrew when hurricanes by these names hit the USA, a husband-wife duo encountering storms with their names together is, perhaps, a one-of-its-kind occurrence. They may have weathered many a storm in their long, pacific and not-so-stormy journey of life, but never expected to also watch reports of death, destruction and evacuation with their names splashing across the TV screen. “I don't know how they've done that, to have a Harvey and Irma,” the paper quotes Mrs Irma Schluter. “I don't know how that worked out.” 

Exactly. Why and how are hurricanes named? Well, a tropical cyclone or hurricane is given a moniker for people to easily understand and remember the storm. In 1979, the World Meteorological Organisation, which christens these weather events, decided to alternate men's and women's names for tropical storms born over the Atlantic Ocean.

And, this is how the hurricanes get named: Six master lists of names of storms have been prepared and they are used in rotation. So, minor hurricane names of this year, 2017, will appear again six years later in 2023. And the major hurricanes that wreak extreme devastation and death  have their names retired. Then the name becomes the word signifying that event. The meteorologists stop using names of history-making storms that are very deadly or costly for reasons of sensitivity.

So, this is how hurricane Harvey met hurricane Irma. A combination of rotation and retirement threw up Harvey and Irma together this year. It is reported that Harvey was first used as a storm name in 1981 and every six years after that. The gale with the woman's name following Harvey hurricane was Irene. But the hurricane Irene of 2011 was very ferocious. It battered the Caribbean and many cities on the East Coast, so that name was abandoned or retired.

And, in all likelihood, going by the ferocity of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and the havoc they have wreaked in Texas, Louisiana and Houston in the USA and  the Carribean area this year, this will probably be the first and last time the storm names appear in tandem. Rather a short stint in contrast to the elderly couple's long wedded life since 1942. Harvey ran a barber's shop and the two made families by taking in groups of foster children, many of them physically or mentally disabled.

Interestingly, while Irma may not be aware of the system of christening storms, the nonagenarian (someone in his or her nineties) lady does vividly recall the weather near her home in Spokane, Washington, on that day of November 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated: it was “cool and cloudy,” she gives the New York Times the weather update.

By the way, would you like to have a storm named after you? The idea of being associated with heavy rains, flooding cities, winds of 70 miles per hour, battering coasts and hammering homes, power outages, is not quite relishing. Ask those whose names are already set for a storm. But, it is also a fact that the hurricane centre is frequently asked: “Can I have a tropical cyclone named for me?” 

Well, for we people living in comparatively safer inlands, these tales of hurricanes and storms and winds have a magical fairy tale quality about them. I remember being fascinated, as a child, by this story of the Three Little Pigs in which the wolf’s huffing and puffing is so strong that it blows their houses built of straw and sticks away and the mean wolf devours the poor pigs. Till the third pig builds a house of bricks that is too strong forit to blow away. Finally, the wolf climbs down into the house through the chimney, where the pig is ready to catch it in a cauldron of boiling water, cook it and eat it. And live happily ever after! The illustrations appearing along in the story vividly portrayed this little rhyme that the wolf and each pig exchanged:

“Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”

“No, no, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.”

“Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down.” 

But, of course, nature is no fairy tale. It can be deadly and devastating. Wish everybody stays safe.

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