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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Slopes inspire fourth-grader’s storm names

Nine-year-old Logan Nosworthy, at his Coeur d’Alene home on Tuesday, used his love of snowboarding as inspiration for naming this winter’s storms. “He’s amazing. He goes down double-black diamonds and everything,” said his mother, Jenny Compton, background.  (Kathy Plonka)

Christening Coeur d’Alene’s first winter storm of the year Abracadabra, after a black-diamond ski run at Schweitzer Mountain Resort, just might tempt Old Man Winter to make it a good one.

If so, no one will be happier than Logan Nosworthy, the 9-year-old snowboarder who won a contest to name the storms in Coeur d’Alene this winter. The Bryan Elementary School fourth-grader has been snowboarding since he was 5 and won by picking names from ski runs at regional resorts.

“He’s amazing. He goes down double black diamonds and everything,” said Logan’s mom, Jenny Compton. “He’s a little stud.”

Most of the names came from Schweitzer, where Logan and his family ski, but some came from other resorts, including Fast Eddy, at Silver Mountain, and Idaho Face, at Lookout Pass. Logan had to come up with names for the first 14 letters of the alphabet (A through N).

The storm names for this winter are: Abracadabra, Bonanza, Crystal Run, Debbie Sue, Enchanted Forest, Fast Eddy, Glade-iater, Have Fun, Idaho Face, J.R., Kaniksu, Lakeside, Misfortune and No Joke. The contest didn’t go to “P,” so Logan couldn’t pick his favorite Schweitzer run, Pend Oreille.

“We were talking about it at home, talking about things he liked to do,” Jenny Compton said. “That came up. We knew there were so many different runs.”

Since the winter of 2000, the Coeur d’Alene Street Maintenance Department has been asking elementary school students to pick themes to name winter storms. That first year they were named by Jordan Shagina, who chose names from the Harry Potter book series – Albus, Bludgers, Cho Chang and Draco.

Every three years, a different elementary school holds a contest for fourth-graders to name the storms. This year, themes for the next three winters were chosen from Bryan Elementary. Next winter, storms will be named after berries of Idaho, courtesy of Erika Skindlov. In 2012-’13, they’ll be named for birds, with submissions by Sarah Cobetto. All student winners receive a souvenir street sign with their name on it.

Street Superintendent Tim Martin said whenever a storm hits, he promotes the themed names through the media. He said storms have been named for everything from mountains in Idaho to endangered species.

Today from 1 to 2:15 p.m., street department personnel will close Harrison Avenue from Seventh to Ninth streets in front of Bryan Elementary. They’ll bring their trucks over for the kids to play on and will go into the classrooms to visit.

“We always get great questions from them,” Martin said, laughing. “We always hear, ‘My dad says you stink.’ ”