When will Alpha form?

[Hammy]

If these next onslaught of waves keep turning into names at this point I don’t see how we couldn't reach the greeks. Unless september and october are just complete busts.
But how often is it that July and August are more active than September and October (serious question)

Its happened on a few occasions though more common to have both months combined be more active than September, but found a few examples of August alone being more active--often in either cases of extremely active August or quiet Septembers, I've looked up some going back to 1990 at least:

2014 (El Nino I believe) is a bit of a mixed answer, there were two hurricanes in Aug and one hurricane and one TS in September, but that one hurricane was a major and August were both Cat 1's
2009 (El Nino year) had two storms, a depression, and one hurricane (Cat 3) in September while August had four storms and one hurricane (Cat 4)
1996 is another mixed answer--August produced four storms, three of which were hurricanes and two majors, while September produced two major hurricanes at opposite ends of the month with nothing between--but September also had Cat 4 Edouard and Cat 3 Fran carry over from August
1995 had 7 storms, 4 hurricanes, and two majors (plus carryover Cat 2 Erin) plus a depression, while September had 3/2/1 plus a depression in September--but Cat 2 Iris and Cat 4 Luis carried over (and of note, one of those became Cat 4 Opal in October)
1994 had a tropical storm, hurricane, and depression in August while mustering only two short lived storms and three depressions at the end of the month in September
1990 had 6/2/1 during August (plus Cat 1 Bertha carried over from July) and only 2/1/0 plus a depression in September (plus Gustav carrying over from August)

[TheStormExpert]

Most likely the the last third of October in my opinion. Could be sooner too.

[Hypercane_Kyle]

If the Atlantic keeps spamming tropical storms at this rate we'll see Alpha by late-September.

[Fancy1001]

Considering we only need eight more storms at this point to go through the list, I'd say alpha will form in mid to late October. the real question is whether any of the Greek alphabet storms will cause so much damage that they'll have to revisit the question of whether a Greek alphabet storm should be retired.

[Ryxn]

I think Alpha before October may become a reality With the 5 systems anticipated to form over the 7-10 days we'll already be at Sally around September 9. That gives 3 weeks for 4 storms to form and I think that can be perfectly doable for mid to late September. This will also make September 2020 the most active month in the Atlantic with 9 named storms (if Nana forms after August 31).

This Alpha may even be a Matthew that forms in late September and bombs to a Category 5 and threatens the US. It would be hard to not at least argue having the letter-name retired. My thinking is to just remove it. And if we get over 21 named storms again after the W-storm we'd go to Beta.

But.... one could argue we don't need to retired Alpha because going Greek is pretty rare in the atlantic and the odd Alpha will probably be a weak storm in November or December. But with the warming ocean temperatures and climate change, there may be more seasons threatening to make Alpha a late-October Caribbean monster worthy of retirement. Should we take that chance on not retiring it?

[BadLarry95]

Maybe one solution to the Greek retirement question would be to run an auxiliary list that never changes and has retireable names. Like for example this year would go

...Vicky, Wilfred, Alexis, Blake, Charlotte, Derek, Ella, Franco, Gianna, Hayden... and so on

Just switch up based on the gender of the last name like next year would be Victor, Wanda, Aaron, Bella, Cam, Desiree...

[somethingfunny]

I'm not sure why the Atlantic doesn't use the same auxiliary XYZ names that the EPAC has.

[ClarCari]

I'm not sure why the Atlantic doesn't use the same auxiliary XYZ names that the EPAC has.

I could only guess that the NHC gave the EPAC those last few names is because the basin is on average more active than the Atlantic in similar conditions (i.e. even below average EPAC seasons tend to be more active than below average ATL seasons). And since it’s rare to get to those letters anyways as well, maybe that’s why they repeat every other year, especially since EPAC names rarely get retired anyways.

Also, regarding another question about why the NHC doesn’t use a continuous list like the WPAC is (again me guessing) maybe because the WPAC has a no bounds to it’s Typhoon “season” so the lists not being alphabetical and non-cyclical per-year doesn’t matter. Whereas the ATL and EPAC have very clear times of year for the heavy majority of the activity, so the alphabetical name lists are a way of subconsciously letting the public know how many named storms we’ve had in a season. Names could then repeat every 6 years so the public has time to completely forget about the less memorable storms of a season.
The NHC then did in-fact state that the Greek alphabet being used as auxiliary displays an extreme importance to the public that a season is historically hyperactive to be using them as names that an auxiliary list of normal names wouldn’t necessarily achieve.

(Side Questions) Does anyone else think that if the EPAC went Greek, they would designate them like they do numbers (aka Alpha-E, Beta-E, Gamma-E, etc.), to prevent confusions with Atlantic, or how else would they do it?

[cainjamin]

Congrats to the 2 people who picked the right answer