Hurricanes

Afi asked me the other day how hurricanes are named. I actually asked myself the same question some years ago during Katrina. In short, there is a list.

The period between June and November is official hurricane season in the North Atlantic. I don’t recall reading about any hurricanes yet this year, so I guess there isn’t one that’s particularly newsworthy.

Hurricanes in the North Atlantic are monitored and named by the US National Hurricane Center in Florida. When a rotating tropical storm (also called tropical cyclone) blows faster than 65 kph it is given a name, and when the wind reaches 119 kph it becomes a hurricane. Apparently, the term hurricane is used only for tropical cyclones in the Atlantic and East Pacific. In other parts of the world, the terms severe cyclone, severe cyclonic storm, and typhoons are used instead. Hence the word taufan in Malay is related to typhoon.

There are six lists of hurricane names used on a yearly rotation. Each list contains twenty-one names in alphabetical order. Used to be that only female names were used, because tropical storms and hurricanes start in the middle of the ocean and sailors are mostly horny men, but now there a male names as well ( YAY!). Sometimes, more than twenty one tropical storms earn names in a year so the subsequent ones are named after Greek letters, like in 2005 when there were tropical storms Alpha, Gamma, Delta and Zeta, and hurricanes Beta and Epsilon.

I remember hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma from 2005. Who doesn’t remember Katrina? Hurricanes that are particularly strong and destructive get their names retired, so Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan and Wilma from the 2005 list will not be repeated in 2011.

The following is the list of names for 2010:

Alex
Bonnie
Colin
Danielle
Earl
Fiona
Gaston
Hermine
Igor
Julia
Karl
Lisa
Matthew
Nicole
Otto
Paula
Richard
Shary
Tomas
Virginie
Walter