Kanor will never pound the Philippines — and here's why

State weather forecasters said they quietly dropped "Kanor" from their list of local cyclone names because it might otherwise do more harm than good.

 

PAGASA cited recent posts on social media that suggested Kanor could potentially distract the public instead of prompting them to prepare for disasters.

 

"We want the public to concentrate on disaster prevention instead of being a distraction," PAGASA forecaster Fernando Cada said in Filipino in an interview on dzBB radio Wednesday.

 

He added it may not be good to have news headlines such as "Pilipinas binabayo ni Kanor."

 

Cada said PAGASA is wary of leading people to make light of a cyclone: "Mang Kanor" is notorious as the eponymous star of a series of local sex videos.

"Decision ng higher-up (ang pagtanggal ng pangalang Kanor) para di maging katawatawa. Baka ma-headline, 'Pilipinas binayo ni Kanor.' So baka imbes na mag-prepare tayo sa disaster, baka maging focus pa (ang pangalan) sa social media," PAGASA forecaster Fernando Cada said in an interview on dzBB.

 

On Tuesday, PAGASA posted on its social media accounts a notice that the next cyclone in the PAR would be Karding - and not Kanor.

 

PAGASA then provided a link to its list of cyclone names, which was updated "September 2014."

 

As of Tuesday, the list now includes:

 

 

An auxiliary list includes:

 

 

The list will be used again in 2018 and 2022.

 

Kanor was in the list of cyclone names for 2014 as of January this year, replacing Katring, according to local weather site Typhoon2000.ph. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News