Ah, what's the harm?
We were all yakking and writing scripts and ideas once, at one of a series of sessions my pal called 'kitchen s#!+', and he was asked, in a trivia sense, who won the 1980-something World Series.
'Not far back enough to remember,' he snorted.
We all knew what he meant. Plus, he was a huge guy ; 6'2, 300, beard, afro. When he didn't remember, we decided that the year's winner wasn't important, either.
And it really wasn't in a Great Moments In History book yet. There was nothing immediately identifiable about the date.
As effete New Yorkers, we remembered the winners in '41, '47, '55, '69, '86, etc, because they were NYC milestones. Then there were the Earthquake World Series, the Cancelled World Series and the Poker World Series.
One way or another, all of those had some other form of identification, or recall, aside from a year.
So if locals (or whomever is affected) can affix situations, reactions, parallels and preparedness to scourges such as Hugo, Gloria, Katrina, Sandy, and our very local Agnes (Wilkes-Barre), then I can't see a problem with winter storm names, regardless of the originator. And the weirder the name, the better and more distinct the reference. (I got a kick out of the Ironic Times headline, 'Another unpronounceable volcano erupts in Iceland').
My mileage doubtless will vary, but the Weather Channel has been so dead-on with its actual calls (and its predictions ahead of those calls) that whatever they do or whatever they name it is fine with me. As long as they keep getting their *product* correct, we'll have four pages in favourites.