by Hurricanes, cyclones and other major storms are given human names to make them easily identifiable. The idea came from Queensland meteorologist Clement Wragge.
Clement Lindley Wragge was born 18 September 1852, in Stourbridge, Worcestershire. Both of his parents died when he was young; his mother when he five months, and his father, a solicitor, at five years.
Thereafter he was raised by his paternal grandmother, Emma.
Despite this tragic start, Wragge’s upbringing was privileged. Emma’s husband had run a metalworks in Staffordshire, and had died in 1849 leaving a significant estate.
Wragge attended private schools and would later study law at university, as his father had done. In his free time he became interested in nature and science, common pursuits for a young 19th century gentlemen.
Wragge’s grandmother died in 1865, and he was then passed around other members of the extended family. Restless by nature, as he grew up he demonstrated a rebellious streak and short temper.
After his studies were complete, Wragge began clerking at a London law firm. But he did not enjoy the work, finding it dull, and shortly decided against a legal career.
When he turned 21, in 1873, Wragge came into a small inheritance left to him by his parents. In a move that seems remarkably contemporary, he decided to take some time off; resigning from his position, he set out on an extended overseas trip.
This would be as much exploration, as holiday.
Wragge had already seen Europe, where he had travelled with his uncle as a teenager. Now he ventured much further afield.
He went first to Egypt, where he indulged his passion for history by viewing the pyramids and historic ruins; afterward he continued on through the Middle East, visiting holy sites in Palestine and Jordan.
From there Wragge sailed to India, and after a brief sojourn, continued on to Australia, spending time in both Sydney and Newcastle. During his trip Wragge lived off his inheritance, augmented by occasional travel articles he wrote and submitted back to England.
In 1875, Wragge continued across the Pacific to America. He landed in San Franscisco, then travelled overland by rail to Salt Lake City; he had met some Mormons earlier in his travels and, fascinated by their religion, had been eager to visit their capital.
Wragge spent several weeks there, and even met with John Brigham Young, the founder of Mormonism.
In 1876, Wragge returned to Australia. Now short of money, he worked his passage on a ship to Melbourne, and afterwards stayed with relatives in Adelaide.
This stopover would prove significant.
Needing work, he found a job with the South Australian government, working in the surveyor-general’s department. They deployed him on several expeditions, participating in surveys of the Flinders Ranges and Murray River.
The harsh, beautiful countryside made a deep impression on Wragge, and he enjoyed working outdoors.
During this period he also met his first wife. In September 1877, right before his 25th birthday, Wragge married Leonora Edith Florence d’Eresby Thornton, the younger sister of his uncle Rupert’s wife.
Wragge now decided to pursue a career in the natural sciences, and returned to England in 1878 for further study. His chosen field would be meteorology.
In the second half of the 19th century, this was a subject advancing rapidly.
The invention of the telegraph had allowed easier communication of weather information, for the first time meteorologists were able to compile data from multiple locations, and analyse it cumulatively. British seamen-turned-meteorologist Robert FitzRoy had completed a major study in England in 1860, using measurements of air pressure across the country to produce the first synoptic charts.
He would later coin the term, ‘weather forecast’.
The value of accurate forecasting had been noted by the military during the American civil war, and a number of peacetime uses were also apparent. Forecasts could be used to issue warnings for severe weather events, and farmers and merchants sought the information to help them manage their businesses.
Through the 1860s and 70s, governments across Europe and America began forming meteorological offices, to follow in FitzRoy’s footsteps.
But while the telegraph allowed weather data to be transmitted, the information still needed to be gathered. This aspect appealed particularly to Wragge, whose love of the outdoors had grown during his travels.
Tall, thin, and angular, he was a fitness enthusiast with great endurance, well suited to field work.
After graduating a second time in 1879, Wragge set to work gathering weather data. He initially studied the hills of North Staffordshire, near where he had grown up, taking detailed recordings at different locations.
In 1881, he learned that the new Scottish Meteorological Society was interested in studying the weather on Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles.
Wragge volunteered to assist, and between June and October 1881 ascended the mountain multiple times, recording the weather at different altitudes. He even deployed his wife as an assitant: Edith took daily measurements at Fort William, at the mountain’s base, to allow for comparison.
The information that Wragge gathered provided a better understanding of how air pressure impacts weather systems. In March 1882, the society awarded him a gold medal for his efforts.
Wragge then decided to return to Australia. He had a few motivations for the move; like a lot of Europeans he saw the colonies as providing more opportunity, he and his wife also had three young children, and wanted to be closer to Edith’s family.
Australia would be where Wragge left his greatest mark.
He and his family returned to Adelaide in 1883, and Wragge again found work with the South Australian government. He established a weather station on Mount Lofty, just outside the city, and was one of the founding members of the local meteorological society.
His growing achievements brought him to the attention of the Queensland government, who commissioned Wragge to write a report on the effects of weather on commercial shipping.
This was delivered in late 1886; the following year, Wragge was appointed Chief Meteorologist for Queensland. He relocated there in January 1887, and built a substantial home in the Brisbane suburbs.
Over the next few years, Wragge dedicated himself to establishing a network of weather stations across Queensland.
These were concentrated along the coast, and would eventually stretch from Cape Moreton in the south of the state, to Thursday Island, off the northern coast of Cape York. Wragge also developed a connection to a weather station in New Caledonia, a French colonial territory hundreds of kilometres to the northeast.
Information was sent from these stations by telegraph to Wragge, who used the data to compile weather reports. These were sent out to a list of subscribers: government officials and departments, as well as members of the general public.
While Wragge was employed by the government, he also worked on private projects. Some of his weather stations were funded by donation, the return on which was access to his forecasts and reporting.
One aspect of weather that particularly fascinated Wragge were storms. In Queensland he was well positioned to study these, as the state’s location meant it was frequently buffeted by everything from thunderstorms to cyclones.
As Wragge analysed the conditions that produced different types of storm, he realised the value of individual identification. Without a clear label for each, it was difficult to write up his results.
And so he came up with a simple system: he gave each storm a human name. These came from a variety of sources.
Milder storms he named after women he had acquaintance with, while more substantial events were named after leading figures of the day. Destructive storms were often named after politicians, particularly ones who had stymied Wragge’s ideas, others he bestowed with the name of a subscriber, as a kind of reward for their support.
Sometimes he just used a favourite name from the Bible, or a work of fiction.
In 1887, Wragge established the Queensland Meteorological Society, and began distributing his reports from that office. Sample forecasts, including several named storms, are below:
‘Under the influence of Antarctic disturbance Sir JOSEPH WARD, rough seas will prevail over the southern oceans and sailing ships will be under close-reefed topsails.’
‘Tropical storm LEONATA is still hanging around the Queensland Coast, and will continue for several days.’
‘A new monsoon we will call LEWIS, after a supporter, will long be remembered for its beneficial rains.’
– ‘Tropical Disturbance’, E. Brewster Buxton
Wragge reports were titled, ‘The Official Journal of the Central Weather Bureau’, and distributed along the east coast of Australia. Neither action endeared him to meteorologists in other states, who viewed him as arrogant, and encroaching on their authority.
Wragge also produced a periodical, ‘Wragge’s Australasian Almanac’, that contained weather summaries and other scientific articles. Editorialising, he responded to his critics, labelling other Australian meteorologists ‘amateurs’ and ‘astronomers’ (apparently at the time, quite an insult).
Wragge continued to work for the Queensland Government until 1903.
After Federation, the state based meteorological services were made subordinate to a new Commonwealth Office. Wragge applied to be director of the new Federal body, but was unsuccessful; his poor relations with his colleagues meant he did not have a realistic chance of being appointed.
He afterwards left Australia in a huff.
Wragge travelled for a time through the Pacific Islands, before settling in Auckland, New Zealand. There he established another private meteorological service, which he augmented by turning his home into a scientific museum and botanic garden.
The museum displayed scientific instruments and weather charts, alongside artefacts Wragge had acquired in his travels; the garden was filled with exotic tropical plants from the South Pacific.
Clement Wragge died there of a stroke, on December 10, 1922.
The practice of naming storms then fell into disuse for thirty years.
In August and September 1950, three hurricanes struck the United States in quick succession. The compressed timeframe led to confusion in the reporting of these events, as the press struggled to differentiate between the three.
American meteorologist Grady Baker eventually dubbed them ‘Baker’, ‘Dog’ and ‘Easy’, and the names stuck. Significant storms through the rest of the 1950s then usually had names applied, although it was not until the 1960s that a formal system began to develop.
Present day, storm names are managed by one of 11 institutions, responsible for different weather jurisdictions across the globe. Each has a formal list of male and female names that they rotate through alphabetically, alternating gender with each storm.
Storms that are particularly destructive are no longer named after politicians; instead they have their name retired from the lists, after they abate.
A fascinating man.
He is also remembered for having introduced the Steiger Vortex rain making gun in an attempt to break the great Millenial drought at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. He had seen this in Europe where it was thought that by firing shells at clouds a vortex would be set up which would release rain. They were manufactured in Brisbane and trialled in Charleville in 1902, but failed. Two Vortex guns are displayed in the Graham Andrews Park in Charleville.
The failure of this attempt to influence the weather may have also hastened Wragge’s departure from Australia.
How interesting, thank you for sharing that!