We are in the middle of hurricane season and we have been hearing a lot of different names. But how do they come up with those names?
The World Meteorological Organization (not the National Hurricane Center) decides the names, since tropical cyclones don't only affect the United States.
Different names originate from three different languages: English, Spanish, and French. They use those languages because those are the languages spoken in the countries that are affected by these cyclones.
The list of names is on a cycle every six years. This means you will see many of the same names every six years, but likely not any that stick out in your mind. That's because they also retire certain names after a major event. For example, you won't ever hear of another Hurricane Katrina as the '05 storm caused massive destruction.
Here's a look at the 2023 list of Tropical Cyclone names. We've already made it about halfway through the list.
You may be asking yourself, what happens if we run out of names? Until recently we would begin to use the Greek alphabet to name these storms. Names like Beta, Delta, and so on. This changed after the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season. Using the Greek alphabet caused confusion, so they chose to make a backup list of cyclone names for the very active years.
Next up on the list is Lee. The is an area of storms that we're watching off the coast of Africa that will likely become Tropical Storm Lee in the next 24-48 hours.
