By Dr. Robert Thorson

Saturday’s extra-tropical cyclone needs an official name. Otherwise we’ll forget the Halloween havoc it wreaked: dumping heavy snow that snapped leaf-laden branches and sending an estimated 884,000 Connecticut customers into the dark.

We name tropical storms like Irene, the ninth in a series of alphabet soup for the 2011 hurricane season. Irene having a name helps us remember and discuss the back-to-school havoc it caused, tipping trees onto our electrical grid and leaving 767,000 Connecticut customers without power for nearly a week.

But we do not name extra-tropical storms like the one that got us last week, despite the fact that it was the most powerful and damaging October snowstorm in more than two centuries. Never have so many lights gone out.

So, what should we call it? Should we dub it a flippant and retro name like “Alfred,” as one local TV station did last week? No, because one person’s Alfred becomes another person’s Albert and confusion reigns.

Should we call it the “the perfect storm”? Nope. That imperfect name is beyond cliche and will be forever permanently attached to the nor’easter that, in deathly irony, sunk the Andrea Gail with six souls aboard and gave rise to Sebastian Junger’s gripping novel of the same name. That storm struck on Oct. 28, 1991, two decades before our recent event with no name.

I suggest we call our Oct. 29, 2011, event the “T-Storm.” Let it mark the Turning point, the Tipping point or the Threshold point, the storm that broke the proverbial camel’s back. Let it be the storm that finally forced us – after a century of dangerous trouble – to put our utility lines underground. Yes, there are drawbacks to doing so, especially the cost and concerns for background radiation. But if we succeed, it will be a dream come true, a world where the lights stay on when the wind blows, slushy snow accumulates and freezing rain crystallizes. Cutting trees back is a good start, but it’s only a half-measure at best.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has requested federal disaster relief for what strikes me as a double dose of self-inflicted disaster. If federal money arrives, it will be borrowed, adding to the debt disaster. And if we get the money, like many financiers, we’ll just return to business as usual, trim a few trees, hope for the best, feign shock at the next storm and reapply for another bailout.

“Why Leave Power Lines in Harm’s Way?” I wrote that column in the wake of Irene only two months ago. Quoting it here strengthens my message, then and now: “The mangled tangle of dead wires and tree limbs that was eastern Connecticut … pointed out the urgent need to get our cables underground.” With stunning hubris, we “think that we can deliver that electricity reliably to our homes through the powerful chaos of forest ecology in a world where storms are becoming stronger.”

Are the storms becoming more powerful? Yes, based on historical archives, instrumental records and climate change theory. And is the powerful chaos of forest ecology becoming stronger? Yes, based on measured growth rates and the physiological facts that longer growing seasons and higher concentrations of CO2 in the air make trees grow faster.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the future. Faster-growing trees with heavier limbs will be falling more frequently during more powerful storms.