Female Hurricanes More Deadly Than The Male

Hurricanes given female names are more likely to leave more casualties in their wake than those given male names, according to a study.

The reason, say researchers, is because people are less likely to be scared of a female-named hurricane and therefore take fewer precautions.

The study, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes at the start of the Atlantic hurricane season.

More than 1,000 test subjects with no meteorology or disaster science experience were interviewed by behavioural scientists at the University of Illinois.

The interviewees said they were slightly more likely to leave their homes from an oncoming storm named Christopher than Christina, Victor than Victoria, Alexander than Alexandra and Danny than Kate. They found female names less frightening.

A wave crashes over protecting sandbags ahead of Hurricane Sandy in 2012

In reality, the two deadliest storms to hit land in the US since 1979 - when male names were first introduced - were named Katrina and Sandy.

"People are looking for meaning in any information that they receive," said study co-author Sharon Shavitt.

"The name of the storm is providing people with irrelevant information that they actually use."

Professor Shavitt said both men and women "are likely to believe that women are milder and less aggressive".

It fits with other research about gender perception differences, she said.

Residents of Florida survey damage after Hurricane Katrina hits in 2005

Sandy, which can also be a male name, was chosen as a female name by weather authorities in 2012 and Professor Shavitt said she discovered it also ranked as rather feminine when she asked a small group of people to assess names on a masculine-feminine scale.

To examine past death rates, Ms Shavitt and a PhD student used a scale that rated names from 1 to 11 in terms of masculinity and femininity and then looked at death rates going back to 1950, finding that, in general, the deadlier storms were those with the female names.

The one setback was that male-named storms were not introduced until 1979.

The data collected since that date is small because of the sample size of 92 (with 54 hurricanes after 1979) but the trend becomes statistically significant when combined with data from 1950, the professor said.

Also telling is that the amount of damages is not much different between male and female storms, indicating the big difference is not the size of the storm but how people react to it, her researcher pointed out.

This year's hurricane names will be Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna, Isaias, Josephine, Kyle, Laura, Marco, Nana, Omar, Paulette, René, Sally, Teddy, Vicky and Wilfred.

The study's authors said one name jumped out at them immediately as a potential concern: Dolly. The name is considered highly feminine.

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