The WMO (World Meteorological Organization), which is in charge of hurricane names worldwide, announced that the Greek alphabet will no longer be used when a hurricane season runs out of names, like it did in 2020.
Instead, once the official list of hurricane names has been exhausted, another list of names will be used.
Hurricane season officially starts Tuesday, June 1, 2021, though the National Hurricane Center will start issuing regular storm forecasts for the Atlantic basin on May 15 this year due to six consecutive years of early tropical cyclones.
From Ana to Wanda, these are the names of the 2021 hurricane season. Six lists of pre-determined names are used on rotation for identifying Atlantic hurricanes each season. The lists are maintained and updated by an international committee of the WMO.
Names alternate between female and male names alphabetically and are not named after any particular person.
There are no names that begin with Q, U, X, Y or Z because of the lack of usable names that begin with those letters. This season, hurricanes will be named the following:
- Ana
- Bill
- Claudette
- Danny
- Elsa
- Fred
- Grace
- Henri
- Ida
- Julian
- Kate
- Larry
- Mindy
- Nicholas
- Odette
- Peter
- Rose
- Sam
- Teresa
- Victor
- Wanda
Goodbye Zeta, and hello Sophie. If this year is anything like last season, there could be more storms than the list of 21 names. Unlike last season, any additional storms will not use the Greek alphabet.
This is because the use of Greek alphabet names “creates a distraction from the communication of hazard and storm warnings and is potentially confusing,” the WMO said in a statement.
In 2020, storm names included Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta and Iota. In the case of a highly active hurricane season, the following names will be assigned:
- Adria
- Braylen
- Caridad
- Deshawn
- Emery
- Foster
- Gemma
- Heath
- Isla
- Jacobus
- Kenzie
- Lucio
- Makayla
- Nolan
- Orlanda
- Pax
- Ronin
- Sophie
- Tayshaun
- Viviana
- Will
Bummed your name isn’t on the list? There could be a reason for that.
If a storm is so deadly or costly to the impacted area, using it to name a future storm would be inappropriate and insensitive. In that case, a WMO committee will vote to strike it from the official recurring list and select another name to replace it, according to the WMO.
Retired names include Katrina (2005), Sandy (2012), and Michael (2018).
Recently, the WMO also retired Dorian (2019), and Laura (2020), Eta (2020), and Iota (2020), according to a March 17 press release.
Since 1954, 93 names have been retired and replaced.
