Bertha? Yes she is! But Why?

Yesterday NHC gave the swirl over Florida only a 20% chance to develop and I felt that wouldn't happen since it didn't have much time over water before hitting land over the Carolinas.  But NHC quickly upgraded the system to Tropical Storm Bertha around 8 AM our time and she's already well inland over South Carolina.  The first advisory was issued with the center of Bertha less than 50 miles from the coast.

Their reasoning was a buoy reported a wind gust to 50 mph so that was good enough since it had a well defined circulation on radar presentation out of Charleston.

As you can see, Bertha made landfall just SE of CHS and is now about 30 miles north of Charleston moving northward at 15 mph.   So her official lifetime as a named storm will be less than 8 hours.  I guess as I get older, I've become more of a cynic and wonder, was it really necessary to name this system?  After all, it was so close to the coast, it wouldn't last long and warnings provided no lead time.   Perhaps their new terminology "Potential Tropical System (depression or storm)" could have been used sooner (5 AM Advisory)?   It's always easy to be the "Monday morning quarterback".

Back in my early days (70s & 80s) in broadcasting, NHC Directors Neil Frank or Bob Sheets would never have named this system.  So what has changed over the years?   Obviously, much better technology that captures just about every wind gust (I'm kidding!) in any small swirl anywhere over the oceans.  But, as Lee Zurik would say..."there's more!.   Back in the 70s & 80s, NOAA was not in the business of forecasting before the season how many named storms would form.  (Only Dr. Bill Gray was)   Now they are,  so (my opinion) NHC is quick to name storms much faster than back decades ago.   So what you ask?  Well, to me the bad part of naming systems so fast is it kicks in the "hurricane deductible" on all of our insurance policies sooner.   That saves the insurance industry millions each season.    Take in this case Bertha.   Wind gusts 40-50 mph could do some minor property damage ($5-20K), but there will be no major claims made since the hurricane deductible ($5K on a $200K house) kicks in.   Who's the loser?  The local property owners (us).   I'm not suggesting NHC is influenced (the forecasters I know are not) by the insurance industry, but what harm is it to delay naming a system (call it a depression) knowing that it can't do any major harm?  That way the minor damage is covered (less basic deductible) and the winners are us.   What do you think?  Am I too cynical here?  I'll have my usual post this afternoon.  Stay tuned!