We Need Better Hurricane Names Because 'Flossie' Ain't Cutting It

It's hurricane season, which means it's also hurricane naming season, and I think it's time we address the elephant in the room on this front: we're out of hurricane names.

How do I know this? Because I saw that out in the Pacific Ocean, we've got Hurricane Flossie — yes, Flossie — barreling barreling up the western coast of Mexico.

Now, let's all send our best to those who might be impacted by the storm, but we need to talk about the name because, Flossie? Really?!

I took it upon myself to compile a list of famous Flossies (by which I mean I had Google's AI do it for me) and here it is:

• Flossie Wong-Staal - Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist
• Katherine "Flossie" Bailey - Civil rights activist
• Flossie Elizabeth Page - American supercentenarian (that just means she's famous for being very old)
• Flossie Mae Haggard - Mother of country singer Merle Haggard

So, as you can see, the Flossie starting line-up lacks some firepower.

As such, I say we change the way we name hurricanes, and I even took the liberty of coming up with some methods for how we could do this.

We need to update the way we name hurricanes. (Getty Images)

Just Use The Same Names But With Roman Numerals

I never liked how when a storm was really bad, we retired its name like we're raising its jersey to the rafters. 

Why are we honoring it? I say we just keep the names in rotation and just add some Roman numerals when they repeat.

They do this with popes. When Pope Leo picked his name, they weren't like, "Try again, bud; we already had a Leo." 

No, they had already had 13 other Leos, and they still let him throw "XIV" behind his name, and it was good as new.

Let Fans Pick The Name

Alright, so maybe "fans" isn't the right word, but what if we started treating hurricanes like sports franchises and let the fans have a say?

We could be like, here are a bunch of possible names using all kinds of different naming conventions — Hurricane Sean, Hurricane Alpha, Hurricane Killdozer, The Artist Formerly Known As "Hurricane" — and let the people vote.

I'm open to letting people submit names as well, but we all know that would lead to a series of hurricanes named "Stormy McStormface," "Stormy McStormface II," and so on and so forth (because we would still use my very awesome Roman numerals idea.

 Sell The Naming Rights

A big hurricane generates a lot of interest and a lot of eyeballs, so let's take a page out of the arena, stadium, and NASCAR race playbook and sell some naming rights.

I mean, think of all the press a company could get. Even if a company shelled out a million dollars to name a storm, they would get that back and then some if Hurricane McDonald's, Hurricane Best Buy, or Hurricane Dude Wipes really took off.

Of course, the gamble you make is that your storm could end up with a storm that causes a lot of destruction, which probably isn't great for the brand. 

Like, hearing the death toll from Hurricane Avocados From Mexico would be less than ideal for the Avocados from Mexico folks.

But we could use all of the money spent on naming rights and put it toward recovery efforts for communities impacted by these storms.

See? It's not as terrible an idea as it seemed at first, is it?