"As the 1970s rolled around, feminists were getting tired of the negative characterization of women that pervaded every facet of society, even in something as seemingly innocuous as the names of hurricanes. An activist named Roxcy Bolton, who suggested that the storms be renamed 'himicanes,' told the media at the time that women 'deeply resent being arbitrarily associated with disaster.'
But as women like Bolton began to lobby for change, men ground in their heels.
'Weather Men Insist Storms Are Feminine,' blared a New York Times headline in 1972. Because men often considered women unpredictable, vengeful, or generally stormy, the men at the U.S. Weather Bureau were myopic in their decision to continue using only feminine names. (Aka, they were entirely predictable.)
As late as 1977, the Houston Post ran an editorial that seriously asserted that calling hurricanes by the names of men would not be as effective as the existing evocation of shrews: 'It’s doubtful that a National Hurricane Center bulletin that Tropical Storm Al had formed in the Gulf or Hurricane Jake was threatening the Texas Coast would make us run for cover quite as fast.'"
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