‘Tweet’ success in attempt to name latest winter storm to slam southern Ontario?

With a powerful winter storm bearing down on southern Ontario today and tonight, there's probably good reason to give it a name if it turns out to be the biggest one to date.

Environment Canada upgraded the storm Tuesday morning stating people can expect "near-blizzard conditions," calling it the strongest storm of the season to hit urbanized areas stretching from Windsor to Kingston.

And, leave it to the Twitterverse to get the snowball rolling to name it under the hashtag #snowcontest as editors at the London Free Press pondered what to call it.

Some of the early gems included "Angelina Snowlie" from @FadoDidi, or "snow-verkill" and "Snowzilla" with an added caveat from @RandyRatLFPress, "or is this all for nothing and we're heading for a 'S-no-show'?"

And, they just kept coming: "Snowbliteration" or the text version: "snOMG!!"

How about "Tyrannosnowrus Rex" or "Chuck Snowrris"? There's also "Snownormous", "Snow  way out" and "Blizzocalypse".

The last big storm that slammed the southwest, stranding motorists and closing highways was mid-December, now commonly known as "Snowmageddon".

There's a long history attached to naming major weather events such as tropical storms and hurricanes to make it easier to track multiple ones since they can last for a week or more.

Each year, the first tropical storm of the season gets a name starting with "A" and the second with "B" and so on. The only ones excused are Q, U, X, Y and Z since few names begin with these letters.

While it was typical to name storms using common female names, it was later changed to alternate between men and women. These lists are created by meteorologists at the World Meteorological Organization.

The names of extremely destructive storms are retired: Andrew (1992), Camille (1969), Hugo (1989) and Katrina in 2005.

Before this system was in place, powerful and destructive storms were named after the place they did the most damage such as the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, or the day they hit: Labour Day Hurricane of 1935.

But this was long before Twitter and its ability to bring hundreds of people together, all attempting to outwit the other in quick tweets.

And, they seem to be taking on a more ominous tone including the evil "Snosama bin Laden" submitted by @phronk, who added, "because bad weather is nature's terrorism, am I right?"

(CP Photo)