Laila

“Laila, she is all set to hit us”, seeing this tweet from a friend of mine, I started wondering who is this Laila? . Later on I came to know Laila is a disastrous cyclone which is going to hit the costal regions of Andra and Tamil Nadu. Well now, I started getting curious on the naming conventions of these cyclone’s, earlier it was Isabel then Katrina now Laila. How do these horrendous cyclones get such beautiful names? This made me use, a software engineer’s first brain, yes, www.google.com. Though it was not a great idea to search in Google with the keyword “laila” , giving better keywords helped me reveal the entire secret behind these cyclone names and I found them worth sharing with you guys.

So here we go… It might not be known when the next cyclone will hit the northern Indian Ocean, but what is already known is its name - Bandu, and the one after that is Phet

Cyclones derive their names through a systematic procedure laid down by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). This started way back in 1970 when the WMO in Geneva asked some countries around the Pacific Ocean to prepare a list of names. The decision to name the cyclones in the Indian Ocean was taken at a meeting of WMO/ESCAP in 2000. They preferred local names to make it convenient for use.

Eight north Indian Ocean countries - Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand - have prepared a list of 64 names. Laila, which developed in the Indian Ocean off the Andhra Pradesh coast creating much havoc in the state, was named by Pakistan. The countries take turns in naming these cyclones. The last six were: Nisha (Bangladesh), Bijli (India), Aila (Maldives), Phyan (Myanmar), Ward (Oman) and the most recent being Laila (Pakistan). When a hurricane hits these countries, the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre (RSMC), housed in the IMD office in New Delhi, picks up the name next on the list. The RSMC has been set up by the WMO for forecasting tropical cyclones in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

I really wish Bandu is no where near…. :-)