I’ve even looked up the list of names for 2020 and can’t find Delta on the official list anywhere.
In: Other
You’re right, hurricane names are usually in alphabetical order…but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
They have a list of names already chosen for each season, and each region. Atlantic storms (like Laura) have a different list to Pacific storms. If they run out of names for that season and that area, any extra storms are given names of Greek letters.
2020’s been a very busy year for the Atlantic. They ran out of Atlantic-list names for this year four storms ago.
First off the names are given to tropical storms and not hurricanes. Some of these tropical storms grow into hurricanes and they retain their names. And only a few of these hurricanes reach land and cause damage. So after Laura there have been a number of tropical storms and hurricanes that have been given names but have not ended up in mainstream media.
The problem is that the naming system were started when it was unheard of to have over 21 tropical storms in a year. So they figured that naming them alphabetically would be enough. However both this year and in 2005 there were more tropical storms then names. So a backup system have been used which just calls the storms by letters of the Greek alphabet.
We went through all 21 storm names (Arthur through Wilfred) so then we start with the Greek alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta)
When they run out of the alphabet on named storms, they start over again with NATO phonetic alphabet. Alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, like that.
Every storm in the Atlantic Ocean north of the equator, if it reaches *tropical storm* strength, is given a name off the same list *regardless of which areas it reaches*. Separate lists would be used for other ocean regions such as the north Pacific, the south Pacific, etc
Hurricane Marco did have some impact at the same time Laura did, but a lot of the named tropical storms never get close enough to the US for US mainstream media to report on them. Some of those storms impact the Caribbean or Mexico only, some of them never reach land.
Latest Answers