Maryland Weather: Do the worst hurricanes bear female names? - Weather forecast: Meteorology and climate conditions in the Baltimore region from reporter Frank Roylance

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September 17, 2011

Do the worst hurricanes bear female names?

FROM TODAY'S PRINT EDITIONS:

Hurricane Katrina dead Katrina, Hazel, Camille … all terrible hurricanes, and all female names. Someone asked me whether most of the worst storms had female names.

It’s not a fair question, really, since ALL hurricanes bore female names from 1954 to 1978.

But of the top 10 costliest hurricanes since then, four have had male names (Ike, Andrew, Ivan, Charley). Of the top 52 deadliest, only 18 were named. Of the seven since 1978, four had male names (Floyd, Alberto, Andrew and Ivan). For more on the deadliest and costliest hurricanes, click here.

(PHOTO: A Katrina casualty, one of 1,200 dead. Barbara Davidson, Dallas Morning News/Getty Images, 2005)

Posted by Frank Roylance at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: From the Sun's print edition, Hurricane background

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About Frank Roylance

Frank Roylance is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. He came to Baltimore from New Bedford, Mass. in 1980 to join the old Evening Sun. He moved to the morning Sun when the papers merged in 1992, and has spent most of his time since covering science, including astronomy and the weather. One of The Baltimore Sun's first online Web logs, the Weather Blog debuted in October 2004. In June 2006 Frank also began writing comments on local weather and stargazing for The Baltimore Sun's print Weather Page. Frank also answers readers’ weather queries for the newspaper and the blog. Frank Roylance retired in October 2011. Maryland Weather is now being updated by members of The Baltimore Sun staff

Follow @froylance on Twitter

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