Why are hurricanes named the way they are?

Question

Hurricane Gilbert, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Andrew, why? Does anybody know how meteorologists are inspired to name hurricanes? And why give them human names?

Answer 1

Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive given names in written as well as spoken communications is quicker and less subject to error than the older more cumbersome latitude-longitude identification methods. These advantages are especially important in exchanging detailed storm information between hundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases, and ships at sea.

Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center. They are now maintained and updated by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization. The original name lists featured only women's names. In 1979, men's names were introduced and they alternate with the women's names. Six lists are used in rotation. Thus, the 2005 list will be used again in 2011. Here is more information about the history of naming hurricanes.

The only time that there is a change in the list is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity. If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the WMO committee (called primarily to discuss many other issues) the offending name is stricken from the list and another name is selected to replace it.

Several names have been changed since the lists were created. For example, on the 2004 list (which will be used again in 2010), Gaston has replaced Georges and Matthew has replaced Mitch. On the 2006 list, Kirk has replaced Keith. Here is more information about retired hurricane names.

In the event that more than 21 named tropical cyclones occur in the Atlantic basin in a season, additional storms will take names from the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and so on. If a storm forms in the off-season, it will take the next name in the list based on the current calendar date. For example, if a tropical cyclone formed on December 28th, it would take the name from the previous season's list of names. If a storm formed in February, it would be named from the subsequent season's list of names.

Answer 2

There is a list of six names that rotate each year, alternating male and females and excluding Q, U, X, Y, Z. If there are more than 21 named storms then they use the Greek letters alpha, beta... The story I've heard is they started giving storms female names because storms behaved like women...ruthless and unpredictable. Eventually they had to add male names to be politically correct I suppose. I'm not sure who drew up the rotating six lists. Here is the website of American names.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml
If a storm is very strong, they'll "retire" the name since it has become attatched to that particular storm.
East Asia also names their storms, but I don't know the origins of that. The storms down by Australia are also named.

Answer 3

sturdy question, Fonzie (and you're actually, Earl improve into no pearl of a hurricane by technique of the time he drew on the edge of recent England!) How approximately those: hurricane Spiro - rejected simply by certainty it may be in consumer-friendly words a nattering nabob of negativity hurricane gas Guzzler - rejected simply by certainty every time forecasters tried to prepare the call, the hurricane ran out of gas hurricane Aesop - by technique of nature, Hurricanes have not have been given any morals hurricane Schwarzenegger - suited, a hurricane is extremely reported as a hurricane if it originated contained interior the Tropics Edit: hi Vapor Trails!!

Answer 4

they start alphabetically, naming each new hurricane / cyclone with the next letter, eg, Andrew, Betty, etc. It was originally only girls names but they ran out of names! Now, each name is both sexes and is used once ever 10 years. if there are more than 26 in one year, greek letters are used, eg Alpha, Beta.

Answer 5

One story is that a weatherman started to refer to an approaching hurricane by his mother-in-law's name. The habit became to refer to storms with women's names if they seemed likely to strike land. Only later were organized lists prepared by an official agency, and it was not until years after that until male names were added to the lists.

Answer 6

Alternate Male name, female name through the alphabet, skipping some letters though.

I don't know why they name them, good question, guess they got tired and confused saying that Big one last year, when there were 10 of them, so they figured it would be easier to remember????

Answer 7

What I can't understand is why can't we just go back to naming them after women. Aren't meteorologists predominantly male? What is up with that?

Answer 8

a-z