With hurricane season about three months away, here are the hurricane names for the potential storms in 2022.
The National Hurricane Center will release its official outlook on the upcoming season in May while Colorado State University will release its first season outlook on April 7th.
The 2021 season was another active year, with a total of 21 named storms, including seven hurricanes and four major hurricanes. Eight of these storms hit the U.S. coastline.
Here is the list of names for the 2022 season:
- Alex
- Bonnie
- Colin
- Danielle
- Earl
- Fiona
- Gaston
- Hermine
- Ian
- Julia
- Karl
- Lisa
- Martin
- Nicole
- Owen
- Paula
- Richard
- Shary
- Tobias
- Virginie
- Walter
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 2022’s list will show up again in 2028.
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 hope that no hurricane names get retired in 2022.
Visit the NOAA for more hurricane information.
Visit here for more Beaufort news.
