Female-Named Hurricanes Are Deadlier

Talk about a femme fatale. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that hurricanes with female names are historically more deadly because people don't take them as seriously. “[Our] model suggests that changing a severe hurricane’s name from Charley … to Eloise … could nearly triple its death toll,” researchers from the University of Illinois and Arizona State University write in their report. Of the 47 most-damaging hurricanes between 1950 and 2012, storms with male names produced an average of 23 deaths, while those with feminine names killed 45 people on average.