What's in a name: 'Bruce Lee' El Niño
Garrett Mitchell, The Republic | azcentral.com 7:58 a.m. MST September 8, 2015
This year's El Nino is expected to be a monster. Names like "Godzilla" and "Bruce Lee" are already being coined by weather forecasters.
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(Photo: Warner Bros.)
Like Godzilla rising from the depths of the Pacific, El Niño has popped up again. But this year's visit is different from previous ones -- this weather pattern is so tough it's not only been compared to the infamous movie monster but also to martial arts superstar Bruce Lee.
El Niño as hero and villain
A worldwide phenomenon, El Niño warms an area of the central Pacific Ocean and can affect weather patterns across the globe. El Niño and its cooler counterpart, La Niña, has a strong influence on forecasts. In the dry and arid Southwest, El Niño winters are welcomed because they bring the potential for more rain and snow.
But El Niño also can wreak havoc, moving swiftly from hero to villain. Most notably, in the late '90s, it reached one of its most devastating climaxes and totaled billions of dollars in damage and resulted in thousands of deaths. The impact of El Niño also can be seen for months or even a year following the shift in conditions.
El Niño storming through pop culture
One NASA scientist compared this year's El Niño to Godzilla due to its sheer strength. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist who loves kung fu compared the system to famed martial arts star Bruce Lee. That's the Lee who made martial arts cool in '60s television showThe Green Hornet (just saying, Netflix needs to stream that) and later in the movie Enter the Dragon, where a bare-chested Lee took out scores of henchmen in slow motion.
The meteorologist reasoned that naming hurricanes and tropical storms helped get out a clear message about those events, so why not name El Niño?
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Women power
Mostly, storms get names of regular people, like Andrew and David. At first, only men's names were used, but the practice of giving hurricanes women’s names became widespread during World War II, particularly among Army and Navy meteorologists. Rumor has it those guys named the storms after ex-girlfriends. Make of that what you will.
But it has left us questioning what went into suggesting names of pop-culture icons as different from one another as Bruce Lee and Godzilla.
The developing El Nino, the weather pattern associated
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The developing El Nino, the weather pattern associated with heavy winter rains in Arizona, is so strong it has been associated with Godzilla. (Photo: Warner Bros.)
We reached out to meteorologists at the National Weather Service for name suggestions. Unfortunately, the only way they’d contextualize this weather event is as a “strong El Niño.”
Though El Niño means "the little boy" in Spanish, there are plenty of female figures who possess the same ferocity as their male counterparts.
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With that in mind, here are a few names that could represent the ferocity of El Niño while retaining the pop-culture appeal of Bruce Lee and Godzilla.
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1. Pam Grier -- Dubbed the “one-chick hit squad” in a 1974 ad for Foxy Brown, Grier is a quintessential action heroine who’ll really shake the shutters down when she comes to town.
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2. Jim Harbaugh -- The quirky, khakis-wearing football coach recently tweeted he was “attacking this day with enthusiasm unknown to mankind.” With an attitude like that, generating a little rain would be easy.
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3. Rihanna -- The unapologetic, trendsetting Barbadian songstress may just have an umbrella to spare.
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4. Hercules -- The son of Zeus may have enough brawn to carry on El Niño's might.
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5. Madonna -- Like El Niño, the Queen of Pop always knows when to make a return.
6. Chris Farley -- That was a given, right?
Republic reporter Weldon Johnson contributed to this article.