Naming
Steam devils were first reported by Lyons and Pease in 1972 concerning their observations of Lake Michigan in January 1971. This month was a particularly cold one for Wisconsin (one of the coldest in the 20th century) which, combined with Lake Michigan staying mostly ice-free, produced good conditions for steam devil formation. Lyons and Pease named steam devils by comparison to the dust devils on land to which they have a comparable size and structure. They were also motivated by the need to distinguish steam devils from the much more powerful water spout whose land equivalent is the tornado. Lyons and Pease wrote their article with the aim of persuading the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to include steam devils in the International Field Year for the Great Lakes which was imminently to occur in 1972-3.
Read more about this topic: Steam Devil
Famous quotes containing the word naming:
“See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul—half a drop! ah, my Christ!—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!—
Yet will I call on him!—O, spare me, Lucifer!—
Where is it now? ‘T is gone; and see where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!—
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
“Husband,
who am I to reject the naming of foods
in a time of famine?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)