Why Hurricanes Always Used to Have Women's Names

It used to be that hurricanes were named after women because women were considered unpredictable. Then again, this idea was hatched in the male-chauvinist-pig era of the mid-20th Century (and now male names are included in the rotation).

But do consider the hurricane that shares the name of a character from Shakespeare's Hamlet - Ophelia. Since becoming a named storm in the waters around the Bahamas last week, Ophelia has been upgraded to a hurricane three times, then downgraded back to a tropical storm three times. Now for the fourth time, Ophelia is back to being a hurricane.

Looking at her track can literally make you dizzy. She charges at the coast, then backs off, spins around some, sits around for a little bit, then makes another charge at the coast. Her expected landfall has shifted the whole time. First it was northern Florida, then Georgia, then South Carolina, then North Carolina. Now it looks she'll make most of her trouble over the barrier islands off of North Carolina (which fortunately, they're used to). In any case, Ophelia has been taunting us just off of the coast for a whole week. Pretty ironic when you consider that in the same span of time, Katrina was born in roughly the same waters and was pretty much used up - but only after destroying a considerable part of the Gulf Coast in the process.

Pretty darned unpredictable if you ask me. But men can be that way, too.