No more durian storms, just 'mungkut' ones

General News - Wednesday December 19, 2007

METEOROLOGY / TYPHOON NAMES

No more durian storms, just 'mungkut' ones

While durian may be a tasty if odorous fruit for most people, in the Philippines the name is associated with a tropical storm which brought mudslides and death last year.

This connotation does not sit well with the people at the Meteorological Department.

Durian is not only a tropical fruit, it is a famed product of Thailand.

So they asked that durian be withdrawn from the list of names which can be given to tropical storms in the Asian region and proposed a replacement.

The World Meteorological Organisation's Typhoon Committee accepted the change last month. Durian has been replaced with ''mungkut'', which is the Thai word for mangosteen.

Suparerk Tansriratanawong, chief of the Meteorological Department, said yesterday the new name will come into use next year.

''The name durian brings back bad feelings about the damage that Tropical Storm Durian caused to the Philippines. We wanted to change this,'' said Mr Suparerk.

A team was set up to chose an alternative name. They came up with mungkut, a tropical ball-like fruit with translucent flesh inside a reddish-brown skin.

''If a storm of this name hits some place very hard in the future, we can always look for another name to overcome any bad feelings which may be linked to its use,'' said Mr Suparerk.

The list of tropical storm names, which now totals 140, has been in use since early 2000.

Bangkok Post