Who named the cyclone ‘Asani’ and why?

Bhubaneswar:  The Cyclonic storm ‘Asani’ formed over the southeast Bay of Bengal has intensified into a severe cyclonic storm on Sunday.

The name was given by Sri Lanka, ‘Asani’ means ‘wrath’ in Sinhalese. let us try to understand why cyclones are named.

Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists prepared by the National Hurricane Center in the US. However, naming cyclones on the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea started a few years back. The 1999 severe cyclone on the coast of Odisha that caused massive destruction and took over 10,000 lives was called Super Cyclone.

In 2000, the Indian Meteorological Department started giving names to the cyclones over the Indian Subcontinent. Since then the IMD has been providing names of a cyclone based on suggestions made by 13 countries across the north Indian Ocean.

In 2020, IMD published a new list of 169 names. The 13 countries suggested 13 names which will be used for the next couple of years till they get exhausted. The names have been divided into 13 lists, the names from list-1 are being used currently.

After Asani, the next cyclone will be named ‘Sitrang’, a name suggested by Thailand,  whereas the next cyclone will be called ‘Mandous’ a name given by the United Arab Emirates, while ‘Mocha’ suggested by Yemen will be given to the next storm.