People like to talk about the weather and nothing makes that easier than giving weather events human names. News media like to cover weather too, and naming winter storms, which The Weather Channel has begun doing, makes it easier to package storms as entertainment/news events.
The National Weather Service has instructed its employees not to use the names in their work, and so has the New York Times. The Times reports though, that the name Nemo is catching on for the present storm, citing that tag's popularity on Twitter and its appearance in a statement by Mayor Bloomberg. And a Google News search for Nemo shows that the name is being used by large and small news outlets across the country.
I'd say that drawing attention to our increasingly freakish weather is not a bad thing, especially if we might be able to start publicly considering its causes. Having begun as a marketing gambit though, there is nothing to stop The Weather Channel's next winter storm from being named by a corporate sponsor, except perhaps taste.
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