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Elderly couple Harvey and Irma amazed by namesake hurricanes after 75 years of marriage
An elderly couple in the US have witnessed a lot during their 75 years of marriage.
But this is the first time they have seen their names splashed across the international media.
Aged 104 and 92 respectively, Harvey and Irma Schluter do not look threatening in the slightest - unlike the twin hurricanes of the same names which have wrought death and destruction across the Caribbean and southern America.
“I don’t know how they’ve done that, to have a Harvey and Irma,” Mrs Schluter told the New York Times on Wednesday. “I don’t know how that worked out.”
The choice of names is far from random.
The monikers of major tropical storms in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico are drawn from an alphabetical list made by the US National Hurricane Center (NHC), which prepares 21 names per year seven years in advance.
The first major tempest of the June-November 2022 season, in other words, will be Alex, and the 21st - if there is one - will be Walter.
Which is why Hurricane Jose is coming hot on the heels of Irma and Katia is waiting in the wings.
They also alternate boy-girl, which was not always the case. During the Second World War, US sailors would name storms after their wives and girlfriends. For decades after the war, US government weather experts continued to lend exclusively female identities to the region's tropical storms and hurricanes.
That practice was derided as sexist during the 1970s, and was overturned in 1979.
The names are recycled, except when the storm is particularly deadly or destructive. In the past, Harvey would have been followed by Irene - but she was retired in 2011 after battering the Caribbean and the east coast of America.
Given the destruction caused by Harvey and Irma, it is unlikely the Schluters will see their names in such a context again.
“Really sad,” Mrs. Schluter said of the reports of carnage in Texas and the Caribbean.
“I have no idea what I’d do; I’ve never been in that kind of a situation,” she said. “I’d try and help some people, I don’t know how.”