Hurricane Gaston was downgraded into Tropical Storm Gaston, but the downpour of Gaston-related memes is as strong as ever. Because what’s the best way to deal with a potential natural disaster? Memes!
As of Thursday, the storm was about 1,105 miles of the Leeward Islands with sustained winds of about 65 miles per hour. It’s uncertain whether or not it will actually hit land, so until then — much like it did with the Harambe meme — the internet can have its fun now and feel bad about it later.
The impossibly French name Gaston was given to the storm as part of a strict procedural process followed by the World Meteorological Organization. Starting in 1979, both male and female names began to be used to identify storms in the Atlantic basin; before then, our society played a sexist game in which we only storms after women (a game that Disney’s Gaston would have definitely approved of). Atlantic hurricane names rotate on a six-year basis; the last Tropical Storm Gaston hit in 2010, while Hurricane Gaston caused heavy flooding in Richmond, Virginia in 2004. Still, the internet responded in the only way it knew how.
There’s the excellent use of both lyrics and Photoshop:
The live-from-the-scene shots:
The science-meets-Disney film mashups:
And, obviously, the important questions:
There are also some abstract photos going on. Wait — that’s actual footage of the storm! Shit, that doesn’t look as fun as a sing-a-long.
