The ABCs of hurricane naming

Chrissa told me this the other day.

Hurricanes are named in order to avoid confusion between different storms occurring in one hurricane season ... sometimes simultaneously.

For several hundred years, West Indies hurricanes were named after the Catholic Saint whose day the storm occurred on. For instance: "Santa Ana" (in 1825) and "San Felipe" (1876 and 1928).

With the advent of the US weather service, storms were more often named after the location that received the worst damage, or a holiday that it fell upon. In 1953, weather services switched over to giving hurricanes female names because of a book written during WWII about a female-named hurricane. However, the practice had been started before the 20th century by an Australian, Clement Wragge. Storms are named as soon as winds reach speeds of 39 mph.

Since 1979, men's and women's names have been alternated - so as to avoid sexism in meteorology. We now have a 6-year list of names that are rotated through, following the letters of the alphabet with the exception of certain letters (Q, U, X, Y, Z). In the event of more than 21 hurricanes in a season, they will start over using Greek letters (e.g. Hurricane Alpha...)

When a sufficiently destructive hurricane occurs, the name is retired. So there will never be another Hurricane Andrew, Hugo, or Katrina. That also means I can keep my fingers crossed that there will one day be a Hurricane Jared.