How Do Hurricanes Get Their Names?

Hurricanes weren't always given names. Learn how the tradition began and how the names rotate from year to year in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff Lauren Boglebaum here. Hurricanes and typhoons, both of
which are types of tropical cyclones depending on where they are,
didn't always have names. They used to often be tagged
with just a bunch of numbers, maybe a latitude and longitude,

(00:23):
sometimes just an arbitrary number. Some were named after where
they came ashore, like the Great Galveston Hurricane of nineteen
hundred or four saints like the St. Philippe Hurricane of
eighteen seventy six. Aunt's Hurricane of eighteen forty two was
dubbed for the ship it d masted. Today, though the
World Meteorological Organization, or w m O, gives hurricanes short,

(00:48):
simple names, people's given names. Since the early nineteen fifties,
the w MO has coordinated with the National Hurricane Center,
a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to
put a proper name to every one of these tropical cyclones.
There's a reason hurricanes aren't named Willy Nilly any longer,
or Willie or Nilly for that matter. As the w

(01:12):
m OS website explains, names are presumed to be far
easier to remember than numbers and technical terms. Many agree
that appending names to storms makes it easier for the
media to report on tropical cyclones, heightens interest in warnings,
and increases community preparedness. Basically, the working theory goes that
people in the path of the storms will remember and

(01:34):
pay attention to media reports about Hurricane Elsa more than
they would Hurricane three. The ways the tropical cyclones are
named worldwide varies, but here in the Caribbean Sea, Gulf
of Mexico, and North Atlantic region, the names come in
alphabetical order off a set of six lists maintained by
the w m O. The six lists rotate, so the

(01:57):
names used in Arthur, Bertha, Chris, to All, Dolly, et
cetera will come around again in But just because the
lists are alphabetical doesn't mean that there are twenty six
entries on every list. Rather, there are only twenty one
names per list in this region. Don't look for names
beginning with q, U, x, Y, or z. If the

(02:20):
storms really start piling on and forecasters need more than
twenty one names in the same season, they turned to
the Greek alphabet alpha and beta all the way through zeta.
Before nineteen seventy nine, the storms were only called by
names typically given to women, but since then men's names
have been introduced to the mix, and now the to
alternate on each list, and those six lists stay the

(02:44):
same unless a storm is particularly devastating, deadly, or damaging,
then those hurricane names are retired, has happened with Hurricanes Andrew,
Hugo and Katrina. Nobody wants to see a warning for
Hurricane Katrina pop up again, and the names Florence and
Michael were also retired at the end of the twenty

(03:04):
eighteen season after they struck North Carolina and Puerto Rico.
Through the end of the tween hurricane season, eighty nine
Atlantic hurricane or tropical storm names have been retired. It's
presumable that, considering the damage left behind from a Hurricane
Dorian in the Bahamas in twenty nineteen, it will join
the list too, but we'll have to wait to find

(03:25):
out until the meeting of the w m O Regional
Association for Hurricane Committee, as the considerations for twenty nineteen
storm name retirements were not completed this year. Only five
times in the past twenty five years has a hurricane
season passed without a storm strong enough that its name
was retired during that stretch, It's never happened and backed

(03:48):
back years. The last year that no Storm had its
name struck from the lists wasteen. Today's episode was written
by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clay. For more
on this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of I
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(04:10):
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