What’s in a hurricane’s name?

Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive given names is quicker and less subject to error than the more cumbersome latitude-longitude identification methods.

Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center. ” They are now maintained and updated by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization.

The original name lists featured only women’s names. In 1979, men’s names were introduced and they alternate with the women’s names. Six lists – all alphabetical, excluding the letters “Q,” “U,” “X,” ” Y” and “Z” – are used in rotation. Thus, the 2008 list will

be used again this year.

The only time that there is a change in the list is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a new storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity. If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the WMO committee, the offending name is stricken from the list and another replacement name is selected.

Several names have been changed since the lists were created. For example, on the 2004 list (which was used again in 2010), Gaston replaced Georges and Matthew replaced Mitch. On the 2006 list, Kirk replaced Keith. In all, 67 names have been retired since 1954.

In the event that more than 21 named tropical cyclones occur in the Atlantic basin in a season, additional storms will take names from the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so on.

One of the U.S.’s busier hurricane seasons, the 2005 season, included storms Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta. Tropical Storm Zeta brought 2005’s final tally to 27 tropical storms. That same year, five storm names were retired: Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma.

What’s in a hurricane’s name?

To date, 67 hurricane names have been retired since 1954.

THE TIMES/FILE