Today's Forecast

Hot! Partly cloudy, high of 87. Gothamist enjoyed yesterday's evening blast of rain as it dripped through the ceiling of the theater she was in onto her lap--a sort of breaking down of the fifth wall, if you will.

Gothamist was struck by one of this morning's headlines in the NYTimes Science section: To Surprise of Researchers, Comet Has a Personality. In it, the comet, Wild 2 (he's Swiss--that's "Vilt") and Phoebe, a "small moon of Saturn" are compared in size, composition and origin. At that point, I immediately stopped paying attention to all of the scientific stuff in the article and imagined Phoebe was Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield, with co-star Val Kilmer in the role of Wild 2:

The rugged, diverse landscape of the comet Wild 2 is unlike anything they have ever seen or imagined: towering columns and spires rising above steep-walled craters and violent jets of gas and dust shooting skyward.

Is it just Gothamist, or does most weather terminology lack this sort of cool anthropomorphism? Ok, there's El Nino and La Nina, but they aren't named for anyone in specific. Neither are the Pineapple Express or the Siberian Express.

All Gothamist could really come up with were the naming conventions for hurricanes, which went from being nameless to only having women's names to taking on a multiculti flair. Hurricane Audrey, Hurricane Juan, Typhoon Fritz--that's what Gothamist is talking about. But let's take it a step further and give real names to other weather phenomena. I mean, is there any good reason not to call a really brutal drought Terry?