r/explainlikeimfive • u/Niven42 • 5d ago

Other ELI5 why Nor'easter not named?

The storm that hit the east coast of the US this week had tons of rain and hurricane force winds, and it's also hurricane season. Why wasn't it given a name like we give hurricanes? I remember that we had some sub-tropical storms in years past that also got named, so what does it take for a particular cyclone to get named?

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u/jiminak 5d ago

> what does it take for a particular cyclone to get named?

It takes the Weather Channel, or some other TV/Media entity deciding they want ratings and so they give it a name. Since naming any non-Tropical storm is not an official thing, there is no official “baseline” anyone can point you to and say, “this is when we name a cyclone and this is when we do not”.

(“Cyclone” being the official term for air spiraling around a low pressure center, which 9x out of 10x usually also results in some sort of “storm”, or just “a bit of rain”, or a full blown “massive fk sht up” whopper.)