Sep 2, 2010

What's in a Name?

As Earl is expected this weekend, it got me thinking how they pick names for the storms/hurricanes. I was so far under the impression it was the name of the person who first "spots" a storm. Silly me... Here's the fact:

National Weather Service has put together six list of names for the Atlantic Ocean. The list goes in alphabetical order from A thru' W, skipping Q's & U's. Each storm or hurricane as it develops in chronological order is given the next name in the list.

In case there are more than 21 storms/hurricanes in a year, Greek alphabet names are used for the next set of storm in that year: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so on.

If a storm forms in the off-season, it will take the next name in the list based on the current calendar date. For example,The 2010 Hurricane Season in the Atlantic Ocean began on June 1, 2010, and will end on November 30, 2010. If a tropical cyclone forms on December 28th, it would take the name from the previous season's list of names. If a storm forms in February, it would be named from the subsequent season's list of names.

Also, if any storm/hurricane is very deadly and devastating, that name gets retired from the list. That's the only time the list changes. Example: Charley (2004), Katrina (2005), Gustuv (2008) have been retired from the lists so that they don't repeat again.

The naming of storms/hurricane was first introduced in the year 1953. It used to be all female names, only in 1979 male names were added to the list.

Names are used over longitude/lattitude identification methods for effective communication across the miles.

For this year, Earl could be followed by Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Igor, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Matthew, Nicole, Otto, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tomas, Virginie, Walter, Alpha, Beta, Gama, Delta... Ok! Enough with that!

In case you are interested, here are the six lists for Atlantic Ocean:
2010 list will repeat again on 2016 (hopefully there are no retiring names this year), 2011 list be repeated on 2017 and so on...

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Alex
Bonnie
Colin
Danielle
Earl
Fiona
Gaston
Hermine
Igor
Julia
Karl
Lisa
Matthew
Nicole
Otto
Paula
Richard
Shary
Tomas
Virginie
Walter

Arlene
Bret
Cindy
Don
Emily
Franklin
Gert
Harvey
Irene
Jose
Katia
Lee
Maria
Nate
Ophelia
Philippe
Rina
Sean
Tammy
Vince
Whitney

Alberto
Beryl
Chris
Debby
Ernesto
Florence
Gordon
Helene
Isaac
Joyce
Kirk
Leslie
Michael
Nadine
Oscar
Patty
Rafael
Sandy
Tony
Valerie
William

Andrea
Barry
Chantal
Dorian
Erin
Fernand
Gabrielle
Humberto
Ingrid
Jerry
Karen
Lorenzo
Melissa
Nestor
Olga
Pablo
Rebekah
Sebastien
Tanya
Van
Wendy

Arthur
Bertha
Cristobal
Dolly
Edouard
Fay
Gonzalo
Hanna
Isaias
Josephine
Kyle
Laura
Marco
Nana
Omar
Paulette
Rene
Sally
Teddy
Vicky
Wilfred

Ana
Bill
Claudette
Danny
Erika
Fred
Grace
Henri
Ida
Joaquin
Kate
Larry
Mindy
Nicholas
Odette
Peter
Rose
Sam
Teresa
Victor
Wanda


8 comments:

Hari Gottipati said...

Interesting fact!

SG said...

Very nice and informative one.

Amrit said...

Informative and concise. We in NC, see a lot of storms so aware of this nomenclature.

NRIGirl said...

Thank you @Hari! Would you be interested in writing a guest post on NRIGirl blog? Prefered Topic: This NRI Life; but you may pick your own topic too. Let me know thru' email as I am no longer on FB. starlh@hotmail.com

NRIGirl said...

SG! Appreciate your comment. Thank you!

NRIGirl said...

Stay safe this season too @A!

Bikram said...

That is Some fact.. you did ur homework well before writing all this ..

Thanks for all the info

Latha Nair said...

Interesting!
Similarly for the cyclones in the Indian Ocean
the eight north Indian Ocean countries get turns to name it apparently!
So we have an Aalia-courtesy Bangladesh, Laila-courtesy Pakistan, Nish-courtesy, India and so on..

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