As the 2024 hurricane season threatens to be a very active one and possibly with more chances of tracks shifting a bit more west, due to La Niña’s presence, it is crucial to be familiarized with the season’s terminology and what everything means as soon as advisories are issued. Knowing what basic critical terms mean could save you lots of time, (and worries) as well as avoid any confusion in hyped messages.
Official advisories come from the National Hurricane Center and your local National Weather Service Office. Florida is split into 6 regions where 5 offices are located throughout Florida and one handles the extreme western portion of the Panhandle, located in Mobile, Alabama. There are South Florida, East Central Florida, West Central Florida, North Florida, and the Panhandle.
The most crucial terms you should learn are:
How do storms get named?
A tropical low-pressure system must be at least a tropical storm (or sub-tropical) to officially receive a name. The names come from a list of names that rotate every 6 years. Names could be Spanish, French, or American. This is done intentionally to serve better this region of the world, where hurricanes impact.
Even number years start with male names, while uneven years start out with female names. It wasn’t always like this. Before satellites existed, storms usually received their names depending on the regions they impacted, saints, or holidays. The names were usually given after the event. In 1953, storms started getting official names, where they were only female names. By 1979, the lists were updated, and alternating male names were added and the six lists of names were officially implemented.
You will no longer see Greek letters if we use all the names on the list in a season. The National Hurricane Center along with the World Meteorological Organization, which handles the adding and retiring of names has a supplemental list of names that will kick in any year all names are used. This supplemental list of names will be used every year. If one name is retired from the list, due to the storm being catastrophic, costly, and meeting the retirement criteria, it would be replaced the same way as any other storm retired from the rotating lists.
Names retired.
Since 1954, there have been only 19 seasons without a named retired. The most recent year was 2014 with no names retired. There have been 14 ‘i’ names retired, the most of any other letter. In total 96 names have been retired in Atlantic history.
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