Hurricanes With Feminine Names More Deadly?

The Washington Post recently posted a piece online claiming that hurricanes with feminine names are more deadly.  They have interesting data that supports their claim.  The article included the following:

“People don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study.

Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes.

Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning  1950 and 2012.  Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities.  (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model).”

Be sure to check out the rest of the article by following this link.  It is very interesting and raises the question if we should start using more masculine names to identify these weather phenomena.