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Storm Abigail, the UK’s first officially named storm, is set to hit our shores with 80mph winds Thursday night and has already caused an amber weather to be issued to parts of Scotland.
While the Met Office’s decision to use a female name was not connected to the storm’s potential strength – the names will alternate equally between male and female ones as each storm approaches – the same cannot be said for hurricanes.
Last year a landmark study into hurricane death rates between 1950 and 2012 found that female hurricanes were deadlier, largely due to gender bias.
Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University found that an “implicit sexism” was influencing people’s judgements of how severe a hurricane would be.
The researchers found that female named hurricanes had proved more deadly as a result of people deciding the threat was less severe or not taking the same precautions as they would with a male named storm.
Even when excluding hurricanes Katrina and Audrey, which would have skewed results, the study found that of the 47 most dangerous and damaging hurricanes, those with female names carried an average of 47 deaths, nearly double the average of 23 deaths connected to male named storms.
Storm Abigail marks the first time a severe weather system in the UK has been given a name by the Met Office, following the “Name Our Storms” initiative that saw members of the public send in thousands of suggestions of female and male names to be put forward for the official list.
