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Miami Hurricane Alpha? Tropical Storm Epsilon? Before this year is out, TV forecasters and coastal residents may have to break out their Greek dictionaries if the Atlantic hurricane season keeps up its frantic pace.

There are only four names left for tropical storms and hurricanes this year: Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma. After that, names switch to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and so on through Omega, if needed.

That has never happened before in roughly 60 years of regularly named Atlantic storms.

"If we get up into that league, we'll have issues larger than naming these storms," said Frank Lepore, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "The new phrase will be hurricane fatigue. Let's coin that right now."

So far this season, there have been 17 named storms. Forecasters expect a total of 18 to 21 when the six-month season ends Nov. 30. But with conditions in the atmosphere and Atlantic ripe for storm development, there could be more.

Currently, there are six separate 21-name lists and each of them is used every six years in a rotation. They don't include names that begin with q, u, x, y and z because there aren't enough names starting with those letters.

Only once, since record-keeping began in 1851, have there been 21 tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic. That was in 1933 when forecasters didn't regularly name storms.

What's more, a storm name is retired if it causes widespread damage and deaths. So if there is a deadly Hurricane Alpha, what is it replaced with when it's retired?

"It will go to the Swahili alphabet or something else," joked Jim Lushine, severe weather expert at the National Weather Service in Miami.

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For several hundred years many hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane occurred....

An early example of the use of a woman's name for a storm was in the novel "Storm" by George R . Stewart, published by Random House in 1941, and since filmed by Walt Disney. During World War II this practice became widespread in weather map discussions among forecasters, especially Air Force and Navy meteorologists who plotted the movements of storms over the wide expanses of the Pacific Ocean.

In 1953, the United States abandoned as confusing a two-year old plan to name storms by a phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie) when a new, international phonetic alphabet was introduced. That year, this Nation's weather services began using female names for storms.

The practice of naming hurricanes solely after women came to an end in 1978 when men's and women's names were included in the Eastern North Pacific storm lists. In 1979, male and female names were included in lists for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

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If a disturbance intensifies into a tropical storm with rotatory circulation and wind speeds about 39 miles per hour, NHC will give the storm a name from one of the six lists below. A separate set is used each year beginning with the first name in the set. Once a set of names has been used for a season, that list will not be used again for another six years. The 1996 set, for example, will be used again to name storms in the year 2002. The letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z are not included because of the scarcity of names beginning with those letters. When a major storm makes landfall and is associated with grave economic impact, the name is retired.

The name lists have an international flavor because hurricanes affect many nations and are tracked by the public and weather services of countries other than the United States. Names for these lists are selected from library sources and agreed upon by nations involved during international meetings of the World Meteorological Organization.

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I mean, imagine if they named terrorist attacks or wars after random names of people? "Jeffrey was proof that the terrorists hate our freedoms, and want to kill us in the places where we live and work. Ellen and Margot were reminders of this. That's why we must stay the course in Raoul, continue bringing democracy to Giselle, and make sure that Wanda and Mike curb their growing nuclear programs. We don't want the smoking gun to be a Susan."

[ 25 September 2005: Message edited by: obscurantist ]

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Originally posted by obscurantist:
And should they keep using peoples' names to describe tropical storms at all? I mentioned on a thread earlier this month that this must be a very strange time to be a person with the name Katrina.

I mean, imagine if they named terrorist attacks or wars after random names of people? "Jeffrey was proof that the terrorists hate our freedoms, and want to kill us in the places where we live and work. Ellen and Margot were reminders of this. That's why we must stay the course in Raoul, continue bringing democracy to Giselle, and make sure that Wanda and Mike curb their growing nuclear programs. We don't want the smoking gun to be a Susan."

[ 25 September 2005: Message edited by: obscurantist ]

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