Hurricane Forecasters Are Running Out of Names This Year
The 21-name list is predicted to be used up for the first time since 2005
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is moving at such a fast clip that forecasters are just four monikers shy of needing to use the Greek alphabet to name storms—something they have had to do only once before.
There have already been 17 named storms this season, which is only half over and officially ends Nov. 30. The two latest are tropical storms Paulette and Rene. Rene is now the earliest appearance of an R-named storm on record.
“Odds are high that the 21-name Atlantic list will be used up,” said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami. “If that does occur, we’ll go to the Greek alphabet, which has been used only once before, that being in 2005.”
There were 28 named storms in 2005, a year that included Hurricane Katrina. Federal forecasters have predicted there could be as many as 25 named storms this year, including up to six major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.
An average hurricane season typically has about a dozen named storms, with roughly half becoming hurricanes. Three of those hurricanes typically have winds strong enough to rate as a major hurricane.
The longstanding practice of naming storms is thought to make them easier to identify than if they were designated by numbers or technical terms. Since 1953, the monikers used for Atlantic storms have come from alphabetical lists originated by the National Hurricane Center and now maintained by an international committee and the World Meteorological Organization. There are six lists on rotation, and the only time they change are when a storm is so bad that its name is retired, like Harvey, Irma and Maria following the 2017 season.
A La Niña climate pattern, which is marked by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures, has developed this season and is likely contributing to the heightened hurricane activity by enabling storms to develop and intensify, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
The National Hurricane Center on Friday afternoon was tracking three disturbances and one tropical depression in the Atlantic region, in addition to Paulette and Rene. One of the disturbances had a 70% chance of cyclone formation in the next 48 hours.
Tropical Storm Paulette is expected to approach Bermuda as a hurricane over the weekend. The tropical depression was expected to strengthen to near hurricane intensity by early next week as it moves across the northeastern Gulf of Mexico.
Tropical Storm Rene, meanwhile, has surpassed Hurricane Rita as the earliest R-named storm on record for an Atlantic season. Rita first formed into a tropical depression on Sept. 18, 2005.
Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist with the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, called 2020 an extremely active year in which every storm since the E-name, Edouard, has set a record for earliest appearance.
“We’re very likely to get our S storm by the weekend,” he said, noting that 2005’s S-named storm didn’t appear until early October.
Mr. Klotzbach and others said that while the season has been active in terms of the number of storms, many of them have been relatively weak and short-lived. A metric called accumulated cyclone energy, or Ace, which measures the frequency, intensity and duration of storms in a season, is roughly average for this time of year.
“We’ve had five hurricanes and they’ve on total lasted less than six days,” Mr. Klotzbach said, noting that “this hurricane season has generated as much Ace as Dorian,” a devastating hurricane that hit the Bahamas in 2019.
Matt Lanza, managing editor at Space City Weather, a blog that provides forecasts for the Houston area, said that whatever metrics are used, how individual people define this season compared with others will largely depend on how affected they are by a storm.
“We can throw a million numbers at these things,” he said, pointing to Lake Charles, La., which was hard hit by Hurricane Laura. “Ultimately, it boils down to what happens to you in your backyard.”