The Woman Who Helped Change How Hurricanes Are Named

As the United States continues to reel from the effects of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, U.S. meteorologists have turned to monitoring Hurricane Irma, which made landfall in the eastern Caribbean and is barreling towards Florida. Hurricanes are notably unpredictable, but there is at least one thing about the storms that's easy to know in advance — their names.

The reason for those names is simple: Human names are easier to remember than numbers or meteorological jargon.