Batten Down the Hatches!

The remains of Subtropical Storm Ana (now Topical Depression Ana) are trudging north as predicted, and bringing us a bit of welcome rain (it's been 5 days, take that California!) and some light but gusty winds:

Our friends at Weather Underground have a full explanation of subtropical cyclones. Basically, a subtropical depression or storm exhibits features of both tropical and non-tropical systems, with a broad wind field, no cold or warm fronts, and generally low-topped thunderstorms spaced some distance from the center.

Subtropical cyclones typically are associated with upper-level lows and have colder temperatures aloft, whereas tropical cyclones are fully warm-core, and upper-level high-pressure systems overhead help facilitate their intensification.

Because of this hybrid nature, the National Hurricane Center still issues advisories and forecasts (i.e. projected path) for subtropical depressions and storms and assigns a number or name much like a regular tropical depression or tropical storm.

However, Ana jumped ship and made the transition to a tropical system before landfall.

In the course of figuring out what a subtropical cyclone actually was, I stumbled onto this bit of meteorological history:

In 1972, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) finally designated these storms as subtropical cyclones in real-time, and updated the hurricane database to include subtropical cyclones from 1968 through 1971. The term "neutercane" began to be used for small subtropical cyclones which formed from mesoscale features, and the NHC began issuing public statements during the 1972 Atlantic hurricane season employing that classification. This name was not noted as controversial in contemporary news reports, but it was dropped less than a year later. Recent articles, published after the year 2000, have suggested that the name "neutercane" was considered sexist in the 1970s, but there do not appear to be any published reports from that period making this claim.

I think we should apply the standard rules of taxonomy here, and go back to first scientific name, and continue to call the neutercanes.