So, if you've been following your meteorological news -- and it's a sign of our times, I suppose, that this is indeed a thriving subcategory of news -- you'll know that Europe was savaged by a blast-force gale yesterday. The storm, which ripped the heck outta Britain, Ireland, France and the Netherlands, is called "Kyrill" by German meteorologists.

Hmmm, you might ask: Where did they get the name "Kryill"? Well, according to today's New York Times , anyone in Germany can buy the rights to name a storm. To quote:

The name Kyrill stems from a German practice of naming weather systems. Anyone may name one, for a fee. Naming a high-pressure system costs $385, while low-pressure systems, which are more common, go for $256. Three siblings paid to name this system as a 65th birthday gift for their father, not knowing that it would grow into a fierce storm.

"We hope ourselves that we'll get out of it lightly," Rumen Genow, one of the three, told a northern German newspaper on Thursday.

It reminds me of the incredible surreality of the rules for naming planets, which I blogged about last winter.