FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Delores Clark
This year tropical storms and typhoons
in the Western North Pacific and South
"I believe we came up with an excellent list," said Richard H. Hagemeyer, U.S. representative to the typhoon committee and director of the National Weather Service Pacific region. "Coming up with a list of 130 names that were acceptable to everyone was not an easy task but well worth the effort. We all agreed that using local names that people recognize should encourage them to pay more attention to the warnings."
This year's first named storm will be called "Damrey", meaning elephant in Cambodian. The U.S. contributed 10 names of Palauan, Marshallese, and Chamorro origin.
The names, their meanings, and phonetic
pronunciation, courtesy of the Hong Kong Observatory, are available
on the Internet at: http://www.weather.gov.hk/informtc/sound/tcname2000e.htm.
Users can also hear the names pronounced in the local language
by downloading the online software. Additional information on
tropical cyclones may be found at http://hurricanes.noaa.gov/