‘A distraction’: Extra hurricanes will no longer be named after Greek letters
The 2020 hurricane season is still breaking records.
It was the second-ever season to spill over the list of preplanned hurricane names and into the backup list: the Greek alphabet. And it’ll be the last.
The World Meteorological Organization decided Wednesday that relying on Greek letters for storm names was “a distraction” from the impact of the upcoming storms and was confusing, especially when translated into other languages.
“If you think about it, the whole reason for doing this is communication. They have to be names that are easily translated in English, French and Spanish but are also easily pronounced in Portuguese,” Ken Graham, director of the National Hurricane Center, said in a Wednesday press conference.
He pointed to the names Zeta, Eta and Theta, which all sound alike and occur one after another. That made it difficult for people to differentiate one storm from another.
“The annual name list has been exhausted on two occasions during the past 15 years, and it is likely that this will occur again in the future,” the organization said in a statement. For those occasions, scientists have now created a backup list of names to use in lieu of the Greek alphabet. (The supplemental names are at the bottom of this story.)
During the conference, meteorologists decided against bumping up the existing start date for hurricane season — June 1. Graham said scientists will continue to study whether moving the season makes sense scientifically and if it will help or harm efforts to encourage storm preparation.
Scientists also agreed to retire the names of four deadly storms from 2019 and 200: Dorian, Laura, Eta and Iota.
Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas in September 2019 as a Category 5 storm, causing catastrophic damage and killing at least 74 (but likely more) people.
Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm, tore through Louisiana and killed nearly 50 people. Tropical Storm Eta swamped parts of Florida as it zigzagged through the state, but before that, it caused disastrous flooding in Nicaragua. Hurricane Iota struck the same part of Nicaragua two weeks later, and the storms killed nearly 300 people and caused $9 billion in damages.
Supplemental list for Atlantic tropical cyclone names:
Adria
Braylen
Caridad
Deshawn
Emery
Foster
Gemma
Heath
Isla
Jacobus
Kenzie
Lucio
Makayla
Nolan
Orlanda
Pax
Ronin
Sophie
Tayshaun
Viviana
Will
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 3:33 PM.
