MOSCOW, September 4 (Itar-Tass) — Typhoon Talas is gradually moving to the east of Russia’s Far-Eastern Primorsky /Maritime/ territory and weather forecasters there predict the possibility of emergency situations.
Spokespeople for the territorial meteorological board told Itar-Tass the passage of the typhoon by the eastern coast of the territory may produce heavy rains on the night from Sunday to Monday with the predicted rainfall of 15 mm to 40 mm over a period of twelve or fewer hours.
In some places, the rainfall may reach 50 mm. The velocity of the wind on the coast of the Sea of Japan is likely to vary from 17 meters per second to 22 meters per second, with gusts on the cliffs as strong as 25 mps to 28 mps.
Possible emergency situations may be connected with the disruption of public transport operations, the falling of trees and advertising billboards, the collapse of large-format structures and poorly fastened sheds, and the rupturing of electric power transmission lines.
In the light of the expected sharp deterioration of weather, hydrometeorology experts have issued a recommendation to people living the eastern parts of the Primorsky territory to refrain from making trips outside the population centers and to keep a reserve of necessary foodstuffs and medicines at home.
Talas seems to be a male name. It is difficult enough to glean its exact meaning, as it has Greek, Jewish and Turkic roots.
Depending on the source language that you try and track to seek its origins in, it may mean ‘sea’, ‘something big’, ‘a huge wave’, and many other things.
A river and a city in the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan have the name ‘Talas’.
The global meteorological community has long developed a tradition to assign names to hurricanes so as to be able to distinguish between them, especially in the situations where several tropical cyclones are tormenting the same region of the world.
The names are chosen by the World Meteorological Organization on the basis of a certain rule, which suggests that the name of the first hurricane should begin with A, the next with B and so on. The alternation of male and female names is also mandatory.
For instance, the hurricanes that raged in Atlantics in 1998 had the names Alex, Bonnie, Charlie, and Daniel.
The tradition to assign names is a relatively new one. Previously, the hurricanes would be named without a system and haphazardly.
A hurricane would occasionally be named after a saint if it occurred on the day when the latter was venerated. Otherwise, it might be named after a locality where it did the biggest damage.
Sometimes, the very shape of the hurricane’s passage above the surface of the earth would suggest the name. This happened in 1935 when hurricane No, 4 was called ‘a pin’.
An original method of assigning the names was proposed by an Australian meteorologist, who suggested that hurricanes be named after the members of parliament refusing to allocate appropriate monies for meteorological research.