It’s hurricane season on the Suncoast, and we track every storm that comes our way. But have you ever noticed that hurricanes alternate between male and female names? That system only started in 1979, and we have a Florida activist to thank for it.
For decades, Atlantic hurricanes were exclusively given women’s names. The practice began informally in the 1940s when military meteorologists used female names to make storms easier to track. By the 1970s, Florida women’s rights activist Roxcy Bolton argued it was unfair to consistently associate women with destructive, deadly storms. She lobbied the World Meteorological Organization for years, and starting with the 1979 season, they began alternating between male and female names. The first male-named hurricane was Bob.
Bolton jokingly suggested calling them “him-ricanes” instead of “her-ricanes.” That never caught on. But her push for fairness reshaped how we talk about storms today. What name would you give a hurricane if you had the chance? Let us know on social media.
