Good morning readers! Much to my surprise, I was recently named the new director of the National Hurricane Center! Unfortunately, the media persist in spelling my last name as “Read”. I’ll have to get my new secretary to send out a statement on this.
Actually, the new director is Bill Read, and not me, Bill Reid:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080125_read.html
But, if NOAA made a mistake and meant to hire me as the new director, then I have some good ideas in mind. I would move the Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center to my home town of Westlake Village, California. This will be extremely convenient for me, and make my commute no more than five minutes. I would also be open to changing the name of the center. If you have a better name for the “National Hurricane Center” in Westlake Village, California, then please let me know. How about the “Bermuda Triangle Weather Center” (BTWC) or the “Tropic of Cancer Cyclonic Tracking Center”(TCCTC)?
It would be a blast to be the director here. I’ll get rid of those goofy hurricane names that they use now, especially the ones in the West Pacific that no one can pronounce. And, I think we’ll start each hurricane season with the “Z” names and work backwards, since the end of the alphabet gets the short end of the stick year after year after year. It just is not fair to people with names that begin with “Y” and “X”. Imagine having the name of “Susan”, only to see the hurricane season end with a storm named “Roger”! Susan then has to wait six more years for her next chance, and then she probably won’t get used again. Susan could go her entire life without ever being used as a hurricane name. That just is not acceptable. I think we should revert to using all female names again, and even use the Greek letters a lot more since the Greeks had a hissy fit when we ran out of real names a few years ago. Perhaps we could use Greek letters in random fashion. Or, use Greek letters for tropical storms, and then change to a real name when the storm becomes a hurricane. My friend growing up had a dog named “Theta”. Wouldn’t it be great to have both a Dog Star and a Dog Tropical Storm?
As director I would put into place some rules and regulations to help boost morale, such as five months off for everyone during the non-hurricane season. Plus, any forecaster that goes on record to the media saying that he doesn’t have any confidence in the director will be transferred to Barrow, Alaska, where he or she will be forecasting low-level inversion strength.
And in closing, thank you for considering me as director, if I was indeed one of the Bill Reids or Bill Reads on the list.
Bill Reid
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