The View From the Surface

Last Updated: 6:43 PM GMT on March 22, 2008 — Last Comment: 1:48 AM GMT on February 13, 2009

	Down the Tur-let...Or, Over a Beryl

Posted by: MargieKieper, 12:10 PM GMT on July 20, 2006

While I spent most of my online life yesterday getting bashed for trying to get to the nitty-gritty of the specifics of what constitutes a CDO, and whether Beryl had one (the internet: kind of a rough-and-tumble place), I did have time to spot this in one of the advisories:

THE CORRECT PRONUNCIATION OF TROPICAL STORM BERYL IS BERLE... LIKE THE LAST NAME OF MILTON BERLE.

Of course, like every good tropical weather enthusiast, I'd saved the first N ATL TWO, which read in part:

TODAY MARKS THE FIRST DAY OF THE ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON...WHICH WILL RUN UNTIL NOVEMBER 30TH. THE LIST OF NAMES FOR 2006 IS AS FOLLOWS:

NAME................PRONUNCIATION....NAME.............PRONUNCIATION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALBERTO........AL BAIR- TOE.............LESLIE
BERYL.............BER- IL........................MICHAEL

...

Gee, Stacy, what were you thinking? And, to top it off, an analogy that appealed to the Lawrence Welk generation? Because they're not reading your discussions (well, maybe, except for my mom, as I did recommend it -- and Beryl is going to pass by Jersey). And while I'm not quite old enough to personally remember Uncle Miltie cross-dress, I don't know if I was, if I'd admit it.

Anyway, this opportunity was clearly going to be too tempting for literary punster James Franklin to pass by. And he didn't:

REGARDING THE PRONUNCIATION OF BERYL...A REVIEW OF SEVERAL DICTIONARIES SHOWS THAT BOTH BER'-IL AND BURL ARE ACCEPTED PRONUNCIATIONS...AND IN FACT THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DIRECTIVE SPECIFIES THE FORMER...TWO SYLLABLE...PRONUNCIATION. THE ONLY BERYL I PERSONALLY KNOW ALSO PRONOUNCES IT BER'-IL. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY CONFUSION.

Me-ow.

And so, like sands through the hourglass... so are the days of our lives.

p.s. Let's not have some overreaction at NHC about color in the discussions. After all, we don't want them to slide down the palette like Min-ne-so-ta food (Ollie: "Darn, Le-na, you put-a drop of black pepper on these cheese curds, and now they're TOO spicy!"). Remember, no one wears white shirts anymore with skinny black ties and pocket protectors, unless they're in a nightclub with a guitar strung across their shoulder (instead of singing IBM songs). So we hope to continue to see more along the lines of:

ALBERTO'S CHANCES OF BECOMING A HURRICANE ARE EVAPORATING

and

WHILE THE PATTERN IS REASONABLY STRAIGHT FORWARD...THE FORECAST GUIDANCE IS NOT...THE GFS AND GFDL FORECAST TWO MORE TROPICAL CYCLONES TO FORM EAST OF CARLOTTA...THE UKMET SHEARS CARLOTTA APART...WHILE THE NOGAPS MOVES IT GENERALLY WEST-NORTHWESTWARD UNDER THE RIDGE.

:-)

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