In the wake of Typhoon Frank.

I remember a time decades ago, typhoons were given women’s names only. The weather bureau came up with names like Herming, Seniang, Yoling — diminutives for typically (at the time) Filipina given names. This was probably a hand over from World War II when US Army and Navy meteorologists monitoring tropical cyclones over the Pacific would name these natural occurrences after their wives or girlfriends.

But when the Philippine weather bureau PAGASA started using men’s names I started to wonder: were there women in the bureau naming these calamity-bringers after their husbands and boyfriends, ex- and otherwise?

Typhoon Frank wasn’t forecast as a super typhoon, but it wrought increasing damage over the metropolis and killed more than 200 people. Not since Typhoon Milenyo has anything like this happened to my country. School is suspended in all levels and I still have to verify as of this writing, whether the seminar I’m supposed to attend at 9am today is pushing through. If you catch me blogging through the day, it probably didn’t.

Related reading:

• Philippine Disasters and Calamities
• Disasters Timeline, Philippines