Naming winter storms touches off a fight

To contact us Click HERE

It's our job to give you all the weather news, and sometimes that means taking you beyond cold fronts and low pressure systems -- into what's happening behind the scenes.

And behind the scenes, the two for-profit giants of the meteorology world are embroiled in a spat over naming winter storms.

The Weather Channel recently announced that it will name "noteworthy" winter storms. It says doing so will make it easier for the public to keep track of developing winter storms and plan accordingly.

In other words, the way the National Hurricane Center affixes names -- in alphabetical order -- to tropical storms and hurricanes, the Weather Channel plans to do the same in winter. Most of the names date back to famous names in Greek and Roman history, but the Finnish name Ukko also is on the list for 2012-13.

I'll give you a link to the Weather Channel's story and list of names later. But back to the dispute.

A few days after Atlanta-based Weather Channel made its announcement, Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather issued a news release, criticizing the idea. AccuWeather officials say the storm-naming will confuse the public, rather than help.

Let's try to be even-handed here.

The Weather Channel says major winter storms already have been named -- such as "The President's Day Storm" and "Snowmageddon."

"Naming winter storms will raise awareness, which will lead to more pro-active efforts to plan ahead, resulting in less impact on the public overall," says Tom Niziol of the Weather Channel.

The company says it will not name a storm more than three days before it threatens a metropolitan area, and it will take other factors into consideration -- the time of day and day of week that the storm will strike, for example.

AccuWeather disagrees.

Joel Myers, founder and president of the company, says his company has studied the idea for years and decided it would be doing a disservice to the public.

"The Weather Channel has confused media spin with science and public safety and is doing a disservice to the field of meteorology and public service," said Myers, who has a doctorate in meteorology. "We have explored this issue for 20 years and have found that this is not good science and ... will actually mislead the public."

Myers also says many of the worst winter events are localized.

The National Weather Service has not commented on the dispute and apparently plans to remain at arm's length. That means the Weather Channel's names might not get much publicity, beyond the Weather Channel (and perhaps its parent company, NBC).

Here's a link to the story: http://wxch.nl/QJQw8y.

And here's a link to the list of names: http://wxch.nl/QJS9TO