Hurricanes and Their Names

We are in the middle of hurricane season, which runs from May 15 to November 30.  Hurricanes occur in various tropical cyclone basins around the world, and there can be more than one occurring at the same time.  To help identify storms and provide warnings for emergency preparations, information must be disseminated as quickly and accurately as possible.

In the past, people have assigned names to storms in various ways.  Later, when storms were given latitude and longitude coordinates, though while accurate, it proved to be confusing as numbers and technical terms were not easy to remember.

In the early 1950s, a system of naming Atlantic tropical storms by a phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie) was developed by the US National Hurricane Center.  In 1953, the system changed to using female names, and by 1978-1979, both female and male names were used.  Today, the system of assigning names is maintained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Tropical storms are given names when they have a wind speed of 39 miles per hour.  If the storm increases to a wind speed of 74 miles per hour, it is then called a hurricane.

There are lists of tropical storm names developed for the various basins around the world. 

For storms that occur in the Atlantic, there are 6 lists of names, each with 21 names, in alphabetical order, and alternating between female and male names.  The lists are used in rotation, and repeated every 6 years.  However, when a storm is so deadly or damaging, the name is retired from the list as using it again would be insensitive and inappropriate for those who were greatly impacted.  A new name is then added in its place.  If there are more than 21 storms, they will then take on names from the Greek alphabet.

To learn more about hurricane names, including history, lists of current and retired names, and procedures for naming them, check:

• the National Hurricane Center
• the World Meteorological Organization