Andrew, Katrina, Sandy, Hugo. Some hurricane names are so famous they still make people shudder decades later. But who decides what a storm will be called? Is someone at the weather service picking names on the spot?
Not quite. In the Atlantic, storm names come from six lists that rotate, so each list gets reused every six years. The lists are kept by a committee of the World Meteorological Organization. When a storm's sustained winds reach 39 miles per hour, the U.S. National Hurricane Center gives it the next name on that year's list.
How the Lists Work
Each Atlantic list has 21 names in alphabetical order, alternating between male and female names. The letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z are skipped. So the first storm of the season gets an A name, the second a B name, and so on.
If a busy season runs through all 21 names, extra storms get names from a backup list. For a while, forecasters used Greek letters instead. That happened in 2005 and again in 2020. After several destructive Greek-named storms in 2020, including Zeta, Eta, and Iota, and complaints that the system was confusing, the World Meteorological Organization dropped the Greek alphabet.
Why Some Names Disappear
When a storm is especially deadly or destructive, its name can be retired. Any member of the committee can ask, and if most agree the storm has earned special notoriety, the name comes off the list for good. A replacement is then chosen at the next meeting.
Picking a new name isn't as simple as it sounds. Suggestions can be rejected for being hard to spell or pronounce, too similar to a recent storm, or even too long for modern communication like social media.
From Saints to Sweethearts
Before personal names, storms were often named after places, objects, or the saint's feast day when they struck. Credit for first giving weather systems personal names usually goes to Clement Wragge, a government meteorologist in Queensland, Australia, who did it between 1887 and 1907. He used Greek letters, characters from mythology, and women's names. After a political disappointment, he started naming storms after politicians.
The idea came back during World War II. U.S. military forecasters in the Pacific began informally naming storms after their wives and sweethearts, and they found it cut down on confusion. In the Atlantic, storms were later named using the military phonetic alphabet, with names like Charlie and Fox.
That caused its own trouble. In 1950, three hurricanes, Baker, Dog, and Easy, were active at the same time and confused the public. A new phonetic alphabet then muddied things further, so in 1953 forecasters switched to a list of women's names.
When Men Joined the List
For years, only women's names were used, which drew protests. In 1978, U.S. Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps ordered an end to using only female names. The new committee agreed, and starting in 1979, Atlantic lists alternated between men's and women's names. They also added Spanish and French names to reflect the many cultures around the Atlantic.
So when the next storm makes the news, you'll know its name was sitting on a list, waiting its turn. The point is simple: short, familiar names help people keep track of which storm is which, especially when more than one is spinning at the same time.
