In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

With the hurricane season officially beginning on Monday, we will soon be hearing some names over and over. The National Hurricane Center website shows the list of names for Atlantic storms in 2009: Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Erika, Fred, Grace, Henri, Ida, Joaquin, Kate, Larry, Mindy, Nicholas, Odette, Peter, Rose, Sam, Teresa, Victor & Wanda. Some background information on the naming process from the Hurricane Center follows:

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 are used in rotation. Thus, the 2009 list will be used again in 2015. 

 

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 different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity. If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the WMO committee (called primarily to discuss many other issues) the offending name is stricken from the list and another name is selected to replace it. Several names have been changed since the lists were created. For example, on the 2007 list (which will be used again in 2013), Dorian has replaced Dean, Fernand has replaced Felix, and Nestor has replaced Noel. Here is more information about retired hurricane names. 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.

And, of course, no matter what the name it is important, as the President proclaimed this week, to prepare. Check out the U.S. government’s Hurricane Preparedness Week page at www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/intro.shtml for more information.