Even though we just had a second consecutive relatively quiet hurricane season, some people think this one should have been quieter still.

With another hurricane season set to end this Friday, a controversy is brewing over decisions of the National Hurricane Center to designate several borderline systems as tropical storms.

Some meteorologists, including former hurricane center director Neil Frank, say as many as six of this year’s 14 named tropical systems might have failed in earlier decades to earn “named storm” status.

“They seem to be naming storms a lot more than they used to,” said Frank, who directed the hurricane center from 1974 to 1987 and is now chief meteorologist for KHOU-TV. “This year, I would put at least four storms in a very questionable category, and maybe even six.”

Most of the storms in question briefly had tropical storm-force winds of at least 39 mph. But their central pressure — another measure of intensity — suggested they actually remained depressions or were non-tropical systems.

Any inconsistencies in the naming of tropical storms and hurricanes have significance far beyond semantics.

The number of a season’s named storms forms the foundation of historical records used to determine trends in hurricane activity. Insurance companies use these trends to set homeowners’ rates. And such information is vital to scientists trying to determine whether global warming has had a measurable impact on hurricane activity.

The rest of the story, as well as the accompanying SciGuy blog post, is interesting and informative in its discussion of the science and data of hurricane tracking, but I still came away a bit disappointed. The reason for that is that the only mention of how this affects insurance rates is what you see in the paragraph above. Even then I wouldn’t pay any mind, except that the potential cost of this hurricane inflation was highlighted everywhere - in the print edition, on the Chron index page, where the headline reads “Rush to name storms may be costing you money”, and on the story page, where the subhead is “As season ends, some say center rushes to classify, which costs you”. That’s an awful lot of emphasis on cost for what we got in the story, which raised the subject then never explored it. I think a followup article is needed here to make up for that.

After a tornado rearranges their Kansas house, Aunt Minnie and the nine nieces and nephews living with her add on a much-needed new room.

You can learn more about tornadoes at FEMA for Kids.

In 1927, Emily describes the ordering, arrival, and assembly of a mail-order house for her growing family.

Learn more about the Sears,Roebuck & Company’s mail-order Modern Homes.

Do you know where each of the states is located on the map?

Try the 50 States Game to see how good you really are.

I really enjoy playing foosball (table soccer aka wuzln). i’m practising now for ages and i’m still highly motivated. Not that i’m any good (maybe around top 100 in the garlando ranking) but i think it’s a challenging game. You gotta have some tactics and a really good hand-eye-coordination. I’ve been to Las Vegas in september playing the championships on the tornado table and i have to admit i enjoy it much more than this crappy garlando table, so if you think about buying a table, go for the american model! And to put some advertisement into this blog (the first one btw), my brother opened a online store for selling tornado tables in europe called tornadotische.at!