In 2012, The Weather Channel began naming winter storms with a hodge-podge of names that came from Greek Mythology, Shakespeare, and even J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Bozeman High School Latin Teacher Erika Shupe and her class advised the Weather Channel to be more intentional.

"We proposed and sent them a random email to suggest that we might assist them and help them the following year by just making the names classical," Shupe said. "We thought that this was a really good, modern application for Greek and Roman culture, mythology, and language... a good place for a dead language to live."

The Weather Channel accepted the Latin class' offer and now receives a new alphabetical list of classical storm names every year. These names will be ascribed to storms that impact two million people or cover an area of 400 thousand square kilometers (Go Here for more info on this process).  This year, the Weather Channel included one non-classical name in the list of storms as a 'Thank You' to Shupe's class.

"They decided to thank us and honor us by using Winter Storm Bozeman instead of our Winter Storm Bella, which we had had for the letter 'B,'" Shupe said. "It was quite a surprise, it was an honor, we were honored by it and we are looking forward to Winter Storm Bozeman."

Latin student Marieke Nunnikhoven says the storm has her a little worried.

"I'm both happy and a little worried," Nunnikhoven said. "What I really want Bozeman to be is a big storm dumping lots of powder for skiing and such, but I'd feel pretty bad if it hurts some people."

Today, November 9, Winter Storm Astro (Latin for star) hit Montana and other areas of the U.S. significantly enough to become the first named storm of the year. Because the names are ascribed alphabetically, Winter Storm Bozeman will strike next, but no one is sure exactly when or where.

 

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