Why Is Europe’s Latest Heat Wave Called Cerberus? It’s Complicated

If you’re at all aware of the heat wave baking southern Europe right now, you’ll have heard people referring to it as “Cerberus”—a moniker that invokes the fearsome three-headed dog of Greek mythology. The name was actually chosen by Italian weather website iLMeteo specifically for the anticyclone, or high-pressure region, currently subjecting southern Europe to extreme heat—a fact confirmed to WIRED by Antonio Sanò, iLMeteo’s founder. The confusion over what to call 2023’s European heat wave descends still deeper, like Dante’s many circles of hell, because in the Spanish city of Seville, the heat wave has been dubbed Xenia. “Actually, the southeastern group has the name Cleon for the heat wave in Greece,” she explains, adding that she hadn’t known how the name Cerberus emerged.