It seems to me the best local storm names tend to be tied to a holiday or otherwise significant date:
Leap Day Snowmageddon 2012
The Geek Prom Blizzard of 2008
The Halloween Megastorm of 1991
The Great Thanksgiving Blizzard of 1983
Following that tradition, our recent flood would be the Summer Solstice Flood of 2012. But I haven’t heard anyone call it that, and it’s been over a month.
What are you calling it? Any good ideas? Maybe if we come up with a good one there will be more federal relief money sent our way, so perhaps we should work the word “disaster” in.
15 thoughts on “Minnesota Flood 2012: Is that the best name we’ve come up with for it?”
I have been, in fact, calling it the Solstice Flood. I even have a Minecraft world I started the following day named Solstice Flood to commemorate the event.
I also see that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant network has used “Duluth Solstice Flood of June 2012.”
My favorite storm name was the Thunderblizzard of 2007.
2012 Solstice Flood Massive Creek
Interesting naming quirk:
The storm that wrecked the Mataafa in 1905 is usually referred to as the “Mataafa Storm,” but I never hear anyone refer to the “Edmund Fitzgerald Storm.” It’s always “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” with the wreck taking all the attention from the storm. Although the “Gales of November” in general get their due respect. I guess that’s the power of Gordon Lightfoot.
And here’s something else I’ve noticed:
Hurricanes are named with generic first names of people, like Hurricane Katrina, but you can’t do that with floods. For example, “Flood Mary” sounds like the idiotic name of a band that would have had a video on MTV’s120 Minutes in 1992.
The Lundgren Was Mysteriously Out of the Country Flood of 2012
Duluth Floodmageddon
Solstice Flood has been my words of choice as well.
Flizzard.
BLOODZARD
Duluth Deluge
TNT
“MJK,” a new PDD user, mistakenly submitted the comment below as a separate post:
It certainly is clumsier with the word “disaster” in it, but if it helps secure funds it’s probably the way to go.
I noticed this weekend at my family reunion that it’s not too early to attach the word “historic” to it, according to this photo album.
The only photos I have from family reunions are of the Historic Use of salted Schlitz beer and pinocle tables (cigarettes hanging out of mouth’s corner: mandatory). So I can’t help with the flood naming, but let me know if Duluth has any historic Schlitz/cards events that need to be named.
Schlitz is easily the best named domestic, next to Blatz.