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

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.