How we went from Hurricane Laura to Hurricane Delta when hurricane names are supposed to be in alphabetical order?

Question

I’ve even looked up the list of names for 2020 and can’t find Delta on the official list anywhere.

In: Other

Answer 1

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.