Next hurricane to be named Final Notice, committee confirms

Meteorologists concede that a hurricane named like a lullaby was always going to struggle for gravitas

Magnus Worldweary16 Aug 20261 min readShorts

Tropical Storm Lala battered Hawaii on schedule, but the storm naming committee has declared the name itself a failure. Future hurricanes will be called Audit, Landlord and Final Notice. Nature, as usual, ignored the branding entirely.

The international committee that names Pacific storms met in emergency session on Monday. Its verdict was blunt. Never again will a hurricane be sent into battle called Lala.

The storm itself performed to specification. It lashed Hawaii with hurricane-force gusts, knocked out power to 130,000 households, and dumped nearly three feet of rain. It simply did all this while named after a Teletubby.

Officials admitted the name had undermined weeks of preparation. Evacuation notices reading "Lala approaches" were reportedly mistaken for children's party invitations. The committee has now approved a replacement list of things residents will actually fear. Future storms will be named Audit, Landlord and Final Notice.

"Nobody boards up a window for a Lala," one committee member conceded. "But Hurricane Rent Increase? People will be inland by Tuesday."

This correspondent has covered forty years of storms with the menace of a Bond villain and the follow-through of a middle manager. The lesson never changes. Nature does not read the branding deck. One is reminded, inevitably, of Storm Barry, which flattened half of Louisiana while sounding like someone's uncle at a barbecue.

The committee's next agenda item is renaming "tropical depression," which members agree sounds like a holiday that went badly.