Friday, February 8, 2013

Yeah. Yeah. Finding Nemo.

TigerBlog can never remember a winter storm with a name before.

Hurricanes get names. Everyone remembers the last one, with the name "Sandy."

So why is the storm that is currently taking aim at the Northeast named "Nemo?" TB doesn't get it.

Have all blizzards been named? Has TB been missing it? And if the hurricane was named "Sandy," then why does this one have an "N" name.

Oh, and the fact that this storm is named "Nemo" has led to endless headlines of a "Finding Nemo" theme.

"Finding Nemo" was a Pixar movie about a fish (voiced by all-time TB favorite Albert Brooks) who is trying to find his son, who was plucked out of the ocean by a dentist near Sydney, Australia. It's a nice, cute little movie.

As an aside, "Finding Nemo" seemed to play on an infinite loop in the waiting room at the pediatricians' office where TB's kids have always gone.

"Finding Nemo" is a level below "Toy Story," but it still has its great moments. TB's favorite line? "For a clown fish, he's not very funny."

If you're keeping score, his favorite line from "Toy Story" is when the "drunk" Buzz says to Woody "Did the hat look good? Tell me the hat looked good."

Anyway, the winter storm named for the son of Marlin the clown fish is apparently going to be thumping New England way worse than it will the Princeton area.

In fact, when TB was looking at the map that showed that the line between snow and rain went right through Princeton. A little to the north and it'll be a lot of snow. A little to the south and it'll be no snow.

The storm has forced a massive change to the schedule for this weekend.

The women's basketball team was supposed to be playing tonight and tomorrow night at Brown and Yale. Then the game against Brown was moved to noon today with the game against Yale Sunday at two.

Ah, but then Rhode Island's governor said that no vehicles could on the road after two today, so that meant pushing the game against Brown to tomorrow at 7, followed by the game at Yale Sunday at 7.

The result is that the women's basketball team will be stuck in the snowstorm in Providence. If that big mall is open, then there could be worse places.

The Ivy League fencing championships at Harvard are postponed due to the storm. So is the women's squash match against Trinity. And the ECAC women's tennis tournament.

It's not easy being a scheduler when a storm comes barreling down like this. It's a logistical nightmare, with so many moving parts - hotels, transportation, officials, making sure that each team in the league has the same basic schedule so that there's no perceived advantage of an extra day off or something.

Even if it snows around Princeton, it won't be that bad, which means that men's basketball will be going off as scheduled, with Brown here tonight and Yale here tomorrow night.

Brown is 2-2 on the season and almost threw the Ivy basketball race completely upside down last Saturday, when the Bears rallied from 22 points down to force two overtimes against Harvard before losing.

Had Brown won, then the Bears and Crimson would have been 3-1 each, with Princeton the only undefeated. Instead, Princeton is 3-0 and Harvard is 4-0, while everyone else has at least two league losses.

Princeton is at Harvard next Saturday, with three games between now and then. Yale and Dartmouth (next Friday's opponent) are both 1-3 in the league.

While Princeton and Penn host Brown and Yale, Harvard and Dartmouth are at Cornell and Columbia.

Harvard's four wins include one by three points and two in overtime, but 4-0 is still 4-0.

Hopefully the weather won't destroy attendance at Jadwin this weekend.

When the weekend is over, Princeton will have nine remaining league games, only two of which will be at home.

Also when the weekend is over, TB is hoping there will be no shoveling of snow involved. Hopefully Nemo doesn't make it down quite this far.

Nemo.

Whose idea was it to name the storm and how did it catch on?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Winter storms are technically not named. "NEMO" and all other winter storms are named by The Weather Channel, which started naming storms this winter. The National Weather Service specifically sent out a release that it does not support the naming of winter storms.

Jon Solomon said...

Weather Channel has been naming winter storms in alphabetical order since October.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/courier_times_news/athena-the-first-winter-storm-to-get-a-name/article_c18e128d-6ee3-5117-b84d-16f0c608f781.html

George Clark said...

"9 games left, 2 at home..." TB, I hope that if there are any of your readers able to get to Jadwin and who have not seen Ian Hummer play, they will try to do so. He is a "once in a generation" player having as good an all around season as one could ever hope. Pete C once remarked that Ian would start for any Tiger team in the last 40 years. High praise from a fellow not given to hyperbole.

Anonymous said...

*Dartmouth is 4-1 in the Ivy League