What I learned today

 Sometimes you learn funny things. 

In my scrolling, while have a few minutes of sanity break, I got onto the Bureau of Meteorology website. 

I'm an avid weather nerd. Also living in Melbourne, if you don't like the weather, wait half an hour. 

But I found the page about cyclones. I think it was the fact that the first cyclone of the season has been identified and it's heading for the Queensland coast. Cyclone Jasper. 

Things I didn't know about cyclones. First of all, they were first named in 1962. Until 1979, they were named exclusively after girls, then some bright spark at the Bureau probably got sick of the women's libbers complaining about this, so they started alternating masculine and feminine names. 

There are five lists of twenty names already for when the cyclones hit. They don't have to make landfall, but they do need to be a category one or stronger cyclone and be in the vicinity. If a cyclone has it's inception out of our territories but moves into our waters, we will keep it's original name. A good example of this was Cyclone Yasi. 

Cyclone Yasi

And the Bureau are getting on board with the names, which up until now have been pretty white bread. The names are becoming more modern. I remember having three girls called Tracey in my class at school in 1975 - and thought it quite unfair that a big storm was named after them. Since the sexist naming has stopped, they've also started going for names which are a little more obscure. I'm sure there are some meteorologists who were sitting in a room thinking about their exes, they parents-in-law and put the name on the list. (Cyclone Zelia sounds like a complete handful - that will be coming in the next few years.)

But the Bureau are getting a bit more adventurous. Of the five lists of names, of which they have provided phonetic spellings, they're started to be a bit more diverse - or some would say woke. In years to come we'll have a Cyclone Trung, Mingzhu and Niran, which makes a change from the cyclones named after teachers, mechanics and Italian waiters. 

This all tickled my fancy as I stuck my noise reducing earplugs in my ears and tried to ignore the Christmas carols playing in the co-working space. 

Today's song: