With hurricane season less than a month away, here are the hurricane names for the potential storms in 2019.
Forecasts predict that the 2019 hurricane season won’t be as active as the last two years when storms named Harvey, Irma, Florence and Michael were among the most powerful to make landfall in the Southeast US.
Predictions are for 5 to 7 named hurricanes forming this year in the Atlantic.
Hurricane season in the Atlantic begins on June 1 and lasts through November. Named storms this year could be:
- Andrea
- Barry
- Chantal
- Dorian
- Erin
- Fernand
- Gabrielle
- Humberto
- Imelda
- Jerry
- Karen
- Lorenzo
- Melissa
- Nestor
- Olga
- Pablo
- Rebekah
- Sebastien
- Tanya
- Van
- Wendy
The list of hurricane names is determined by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization. The NHC uses six lists in rotation and they are recycled every six years, so 2019’s list will show up again in 2025.
A long time ago, hurricanes were named randomly. The military, for example, started naming storms after their girlfriends and wives, but none of these choices were made public.
Then, the National Weather Service decided to give human names to hurricanes to quickly identify storms and make it easier for citizens and media to process warning messages.
They used the World War II Alphabet – Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy – but this created confusion because every year the storm names were the same.
A few years later, in 1953, US weather professionals started using female names, sorted alphabetically. In 1979, they began alternating the feminine designations with male names, recycling the list every six years.
Names of especially destructive hurricanes are usually retired with the offending name replaced by another name. Recently, the names Otto and Matthew were retired after causing extensive damage back in 2016.
Let’s all hope for a quiet 2019 season.
