To Weather Service's Chagrin, 'Nemo' Catching On

By now, you have probably made a Finding Nemo joke about the winter storm currently bearing down on the Northeast. "Nemo" is one of the top trending topics on Twitter, and is ranked fairly high in Google searches as well, the New York Times reports. All of which indicates that the Weather Channel's plan to start naming winter storms is catching on, much to the chagrin of the National Weather Service. "The names are working well," says meteorologist Bryan Norcross, who helped devise the plan. (Read the channel's full rationale here.)

Norcross says they weren't thinking of the cute cartoon fish when they came up with the name. "Nemo is a Latin word," he says, and also evokes Captain Nemo, who was "a pretty tough, fierce guy." Whatever the origin, other meteorologists hate the practice. The National Weather Service today reiterated that it doesn't support naming winter storms. Their "impact can vary from one location to another," a spokesman explains, and "it's "difficult to define where one ends and another begins." In other words, the Atlantic translates, "everyone except the Weather Channel is trying to avoid panic." (More Weather Channel stories.)