Adrian D. Shaw at wrote:
Could we possibly have another abbreviation for Tropical Storm? I
read
the subject and thought someone was giving a weather report of a
thunder storm in Firenze.

"Rob Overfield" wrote in message
. uk...
Adrian

Adrian, thats the official designation from National Hurricane Centre.
You
going to tell them to change?? )

.... a pity that when deciding on the METAR code letters for a
thunderstorm the powers-that-were (1950's??) decided to use 'TS' rather
than base it on the Beaufort letters for a thunderstorm 'tl' (i.e. a mix
of 't' for thunder heard & 'l' for lightning seen, thus making 'TL').
Unfortunately we're stuck with it. However, often in operational use,
the 'TS' for tropical storm has been written as 'T/S' which could be a
work-around within the newsgroup.

(From an old book I have dated 1938, in the US, the abbreviation for a
thunderstorm when transmitted on a teleprinter was simply 'T', with
qualifiers *after* the letter, thus a 'mild thunderstorm' was
transmitted as ' T- ', a 'severe thunderstorm' as 'T+'. In the same
section, the note " TORNADO: always (underlined) written out in full".

Martin.

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