Greek Storm Names are No Longer Used

[wwizard]

Per current WMO policy, Greek storms cannot be retired and can only be remembered as "notable" with the list of retired storms. And yeah, if Beta were to be bad this year, it would be remembered as "Beta (2020)", and Beta would be back on the list for future years if we get that far again.

There's no point in retiring any names if they're just going to do that. Theoretically, you could have a bad Beta storm every year.
Our house was destroyed in Beta.
Which one, 2020, 2022, or 2023?

Just make 2 alternate lists and rotate them every year, and replace the names that need to be retired like they do with the rest of them. Why does it have to be so difficult?

[ElectricStorm]

The NHC actually lobbied for the Greek naming system to be abolished, but the WMO rejected the proposition.
They need to reconsider abolishing the system. Why? Look at what's going on right now in Central America.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110718172 ... nitems.pdf (page 10)
https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/tcp/ ... -32_en.pdf (page 10)
https://web.archive.org/web/20110722013 ... -HC-28.pdf (page 11)

Incoming tl;dr

Quote:

"Title: Replace Backup Tropical Cyclone “Greek Alphabet” Name List with Secondary
Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Name List
Submitter: NOAA/NWS
Discussion: Since 1953, NHC has utilized a naming protocol for Atlantic tropical cyclones that use
commonly known, short, distinctive names understood by the general public and media.
The name lists, which have been agreed upon at international meetings of the WMO,
have a French, Spanish, Dutch and English due to the geographical coverage of the
storms throughout the Atlantic and Caribbean.
If a name is retired, it can be easily replaced with another common name that is
understood and well known throughout the tropical basin.
However, if the primary name list is exhausted, as it was in 2005, NHC ceases the simple
and well understood naming protocol and resorts to use of the less understood and
inconsistent Greek Alphabet as the backup list. Feedback received from the general
public, media and EM community about the practice of using the Greek Alphabet for
naming tropical cyclones was generally unfavorable with comments such as “ludicrous,”
“idiotic” to “ridiculous.”
The use of the Greek Alphabet as a backup list to the primary list of Atlantic tropical
cyclone names has several disadvantages:
● Generally unknown and confusing to the public.
● Inconsistent with the standard naming convention used for tropical cyclones.
● If a Greek letter has to be retired, it cannot be replaced.
● Defeats the purpose of using commonly known, short distinctive names
understood by the public and media (ex: The Greek Alphabet jumps from a “B”
storm to a “G” storm then back to a “D” storm. If you expect an “F” storm
instead you will jump to “Z”).

Recommendation: Develop a secondary name list, utilizing conventions of the primary name list, that could
be placed into service if the primary Atlantic Cyclone name list is exhausted. Named
storms from the secondary or alternate list that require retirement could easily be
replenished based on recommendations from the WMO. IHC to forward to RA-IV
Committee.
Action: Accept recommendation. Further action on this item is dependent on whether the RA-IV
Committee approves the recommendation.
Status (3/22/10): The WMO RA IV Hurricane Committee met from 8-12 March 2010 and did not approve
this recommendation. CLOSED

Why does the WMO have to approve it in the first place? The NHC is the one sending out advisories for the storms, just let them handle the names. It's really not that difficult.

[NorthieStangl]

This is unlikely, but it is possible that Delta and Zeta also will be retired.

I don't agree with the absolutely ridiculous 2006 consensus that Greek names could be retired but not removed from the list. Eta and Iota especially proved how stupid that decision was. But I don't think the Greek names could be replaced with any other name. I mean, it is the Greek alphabet. You cannot just replace a letter with another name.

In the case that Delta, Zeta, Eta, and Iota get retired, they should simply get removed because there still would be 41 names (up to Omega) available for future usage. Therefore, the list would go like Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Epsilon, Theta, Kappa, Lambda...

[AJC3]

The three threads that have been started on this subject have been merged.

[RL3AO]

To me the backup list seems like such an obvious solution. One set of names (or two if you want to keep the alternating male/female names) as a backup. Retire them like normal storms and then replace that name with the same letter/gender.

[RL3AO]

Why does the WMO have to approve it in the first place? The NHC is the one sending out advisories for the storms, just let them handle the names. It's really not that difficult.

The NHC gets to name it because the WMO has made them the RSMC of the Atlantic. WMO approves the names for all official storms in all basins.

[mitchell]

if there's a 28th named storm in 2030 it will be named Eta2030 or something similar. Sounds a bit unwieldly to me, but I doubt we'll be hitting the Greek names very often.

It's unwieldy and also just seems flat out less sensible than retirement. Name retirement for a catastrophic deadly hurricane just makes sense. You don't want to be referring to another system by same name again a few years later. Tacking on the calendar year is better than just repeating the name, but hardly seems like the best possible solution.

[Hurricanehink]

To me the backup list seems like such an obvious solution. One set of names (or two if you want to keep the alternating male/female names) as a backup. Retire them like normal storms and then replace that name with the same letter/gender.

Or do just one backup list with names that can be either gender.

[CrazyC83]

It's clear we've hit a breaking point. The status quo no longer works since we have to retire Greek letters, an issue that never really came up in 2005 (in fact, the only *normal* name that is surely being retired is Laura, with Isaias and Sally being possible). However, this requires coming up with 21 or 42 new names abruptly, in the middle of a pandemic no less and after a hectic year where TCR's are going to take a long time to do. They might kick this can to 2022 as the meeting will likely be virtual again this year, although they will have more time to plan for it.

The first priority would be replacement names for the natural retirees of Dorian and Laura (and others?). One other oddball solution, if we need to go Greek one more year with a 2022 introduction to new lists, could be to go the Greek Alphabet in REVERSE in 2021 if we get that far - start with Omega after Wanda, that way we can avoid hitting these need-to-be-retired names.

[CyclonicFury]

It's clear we've hit a breaking point. The status quo no longer works since we have to retire Greek letters, an issue that never really came up in 2005 (in fact, the only *normal* name that is surely being retired is Laura, with Isaias and Sally being possible). However, this requires coming up with 21 or 42 new names abruptly, in the middle of a pandemic no less and after a hectic year where TCR's are going to take a long time to do. They might kick this can to 2022 as the meeting will likely be virtual again this year, although they will have more time to plan for it.

The first priority would be replacement names for the natural retirees of Dorian and Laura (and others?). One other oddball solution, if we need to go Greek one more year with a 2022 introduction to new lists, could be to go the Greek Alphabet in REVERSE in 2021 if we get that far - start with Omega after Wanda, that way we can avoid hitting these need-to-be-retired names.

I would hope if they have to go virtual again for this conference, they actually retire the names for both 2019 and 2020. At the moment, Dorian is still on the official 2025 list.

[CrazyC83]

It's clear we've hit a breaking point. The status quo no longer works since we have to retire Greek letters, an issue that never really came up in 2005 (in fact, the only *normal* name that is surely being retired is Laura, with Isaias and Sally being possible). However, this requires coming up with 21 or 42 new names abruptly, in the middle of a pandemic no less and after a hectic year where TCR's are going to take a long time to do. They might kick this can to 2022 as the meeting will likely be virtual again this year, although they will have more time to plan for it.

The first priority would be replacement names for the natural retirees of Dorian and Laura (and others?). One other oddball solution, if we need to go Greek one more year with a 2022 introduction to new lists, could be to go the Greek Alphabet in REVERSE in 2021 if we get that far - start with Omega after Wanda, that way we can avoid hitting these need-to-be-retired names.

I would hope if they have to go virtual again for this conference, they actually retire the names for both 2019 and 2020. At the moment, Dorian is still on the official 2025 list.

If nothing else, I would at a minimum retire Dorian and Laura with TBD in those spots.

[ElectricStorm]

It's clear we've hit a breaking point. The status quo no longer works since we have to retire Greek letters, an issue that never really came up in 2005 (in fact, the only *normal* name that is surely being retired is Laura, with Isaias and Sally being possible). However, this requires coming up with 21 or 42 new names abruptly, in the middle of a pandemic no less and after a hectic year where TCR's are going to take a long time to do. They might kick this can to 2022 as the meeting will likely be virtual again this year, although they will have more time to plan for it.

The first priority would be replacement names for the natural retirees of Dorian and Laura (and others?). One other oddball solution, if we need to go Greek one more year with a 2022 introduction to new lists, could be to go the Greek Alphabet in REVERSE in 2021 if we get that far - start with Omega after Wanda, that way we can avoid hitting these need-to-be-retired names.

I would hope if they have to go virtual again for this conference, they actually retire the names for both 2019 and 2020. At the moment, Dorian is still on the official 2025 list.

If nothing else, I would at a minimum retire Dorian and Laura with TBD in those spots.

Yeah for real. It's not that hard to remove those names lol

[Shell Mound]

Maybe we should depersonalise forces of nature and simply go with numerical designations from now on.

Example: MH* AL12-20 (basin + storm #-last two digits of YYYY).

*MH = Major Hurricane

Any thoughts on this proposal? Should we abandon names altogether and just go with numbers and digits?

[Cleveland Kent Evans]

Maybe we should depersonalise forces of nature and simply go with numerical designations from now on.

Example: MH* AL12-20 (basin + storm #-last two digits of YYYY).

*MH = Major Hurricane

Any thoughts on this proposal? Should we abandon names altogether and just go with numbers and digits?

No. I believe this would be more confusing for the general public who are not numbers geeks. Naming particular entities is the main way the human mind has to understand the world. And though one would not have to use human's given names to do the naming, numbers just wouldn't be as good for the average person to pay attention to weather reports and understand which storm is which when there is more than one active at the same time.

[mitchell]

I feel like that would get rid of the biggest advantage of the naming convention - ease of communication

MH* AL11-05 = Hard to say, hard to remember and hard to distinguish from other storms that might be named something like MH* AL11-20

Hurricane Katrina = easy to say, remember and easy to distinguish from something like Hurricane Kyle

[somethingfunny]

Sell the naming rights to corporate sponsors, use the money to pay for Hurricane Hunter equipment upgrades and expand recon to the WPAC.

Hurricane Applebee's
Tropical Storm McDonald's
Typhoon Bank of America

[AnnularCane]

Sell the naming rights to corporate sponsors, use the money to pay for Hurricane Hunter equipment upgrades and expand recon to the WPAC.

Hurricane Applebee's
Tropical Storm McDonald's
Typhoon Bank of America

Or how about, say, "Hurricane Danny, sponsored by Applebee's."

For those of us who want to keep the names.

[Category5Kaiju]

Alright, so let's assume the WMO does indeed decide to abolish the Greek alphabet system after considering all of the reasons mentioned so far in this discussion thread against naming storms Greek letters (as well as the quite obvious issue of Eta and Iota being extremely powerful and catastrophic storms that deserve to have their respective "names" uniquely tied with the historic events that unfolded in Central America over the span of two weeks). What system should take over? I think at this point there are two major camps: have 2 auxiliary, normal name lists (one for an even year and one for an odd year) or don't use auxiliary lists and instead go with a rolling set of names (that is, lists 1-6 are kept but used without regard to year, so Eta and Iota would have been Grace and Ida respectively and Julian would start off the 2021 season with this method).


Here's what I personally think: I support the rolling set of names idea, and here are several reasons why.

1. There are several names like Van or William that have never been used ever since the advent of the current naming policy, and with this method such names would have a surefire chance of being used at some point in the future (in other words, all possible letters and names are represented equally and definitively).

2. With 126 possible names that can be used in a given season, even with better satellite tech and global warming, there is a solid 0 percent chance that a given season in the future would exhaust names anytime soon, and the questions of "what if we run out of names to use" will be squashed.

3. Using this method, the effects of the "I" named storm occurring during peak season and therefore being the powerful storm that frequently needs to be retired would be at least slightly mitigated as various seasons could feature an I storm in their beginning or end. We are running out of commonly recognizable I names due to how many have been retired so far if I am not mistaken.

4. If an oddball storm were to exist in late December and early January, it could get confusing if we have pre-designated naming lists for specific years (for example, why was so-and-so storm's name from the 2021 list but existed in 2022?). By using this method, we eliminate the idea that each naming list must correspond with a certain year, and names are used whenever there is a tropical cyclone regardless of the date.

5. The WPAC, CPAC, Australia, and South Pacific basins all use rolling set of names, so this technique isn't anything alien. I understand we are used to the A-first every season idea, but I would think only meteorologists and wx enthusiasts would really pay close attention to the statistics and intricate details of each season, so if this new policy is adapted and the general public is informed on how it works as well as informed by news articles on a season's progress and the storms that form, then I have a feeling this policy could work. Not to mention names are used for the public to remember especially if the name is from a devastating storm as well as for scientific history/literature purposes, so imho I really don't think alphabetization with A first every season is as important as some people would think.


These are just my thoughts. Constructive criticism, objections, suggestions, and approvals are all warmly welcome.

[NorthieStangl]

Alright, so let's assume the WMO does indeed decide to abolish the Greek alphabet system after considering all of the reasons mentioned so far in this discussion thread against naming storms Greek letters (as well as the quite obvious issue of Eta and Iota being extremely powerful and catastrophic storms that deserve to have their respective "names" uniquely tied with the historic events that unfolded in Central America over the span of two weeks). What system should take over? I think at this point there are two major camps: have 2 auxiliary, normal name lists (one for an even year and one for an odd year) or don't use auxiliary lists and instead go with a rolling set of names (that is, lists 1-6 are kept but used without regard to year, so Eta and Iota would have been Grace and Ida respectively and Julian would start off the 2021 season with this method).


Here's what I personally think: I support the rolling set of names idea, and here are several reasons why.

1. There are several names like Van or William that have never been used ever since the advent of the current naming policy, and with this method such names would have a surefire chance of being used at some point in the future (in other words, all possible letters and names are represented equally and definitively).

2. With 126 possible names that can be used in a given season, even with better satellite tech and global warming, there is a solid 0 percent chance that a given season in the future would exhaust names anytime soon, and the questions of "what if we run out of names to use" will be squashed.

3. Using this method, the effects of the "I" named storm occurring during peak season and therefore being the powerful storm that frequently needs to be retired would be at least slightly mitigated as various seasons could feature an I storm in their beginning or end. We are running out of commonly recognizable I names due to how many have been retired so far if I am not mistaken.

4. If an oddball storm were to exist in late December and early January, it could get confusing if we have pre-designated naming lists for specific years (for example, why was so-and-so storm's name from the 2021 list but existed in 2022?). By using this method, we eliminate the idea that each naming list must correspond with a certain year, and names are used whenever there is a tropical cyclone regardless of the date.

5. The WPAC, CPAC, Australia, and South Pacific basins all use rolling set of names, so this technique isn't anything alien. I understand we are used to the A-first every season idea, but I would think only meteorologists and wx enthusiasts would really pay close attention to the statistics and intricate details of each season, so if this new policy is adapted and the general public is informed on how it works as well as informed by news articles on a season's progress and the storms that form, then I have a feeling this policy could work. Not to mention names are used for the public to remember especially if the name is from a devastating storm as well as for scientific history/literature purposes, so imho I really don't think alphabetization with A first every season is as important as some people would think.


These are just my thoughts. Constructive criticism, objections, suggestions, and approvals are all warmly welcome.

There is no reason why we couldn't switch to a sequential rotation system. Outside of the two basins under NHC's responsibility, the Southwestern Indian basin is the only one that start at the letter A each year, and that basin in general isn't as active as the two North American basins. Even Central Pacific and South Atlantic - the two least active basins worldwide - use names sequentially on a rotating basis!

[Category5Kaiju]

Alright, so let's assume the WMO does indeed decide to abolish the Greek alphabet system after considering all of the reasons mentioned so far in this discussion thread against naming storms Greek letters (as well as the quite obvious issue of Eta and Iota being extremely powerful and catastrophic storms that deserve to have their respective "names" uniquely tied with the historic events that unfolded in Central America over the span of two weeks). What system should take over? I think at this point there are two major camps: have 2 auxiliary, normal name lists (one for an even year and one for an odd year) or don't use auxiliary lists and instead go with a rolling set of names (that is, lists 1-6 are kept but used without regard to year, so Eta and Iota would have been Grace and Ida respectively and Julian would start off the 2021 season with this method).


Here's what I personally think: I support the rolling set of names idea, and here are several reasons why.

1. There are several names like Van or William that have never been used ever since the advent of the current naming policy, and with this method such names would have a surefire chance of being used at some point in the future (in other words, all possible letters and names are represented equally and definitively).

2. With 126 possible names that can be used in a given season, even with better satellite tech and global warming, there is a solid 0 percent chance that a given season in the future would exhaust names anytime soon, and the questions of "what if we run out of names to use" will be squashed.

3. Using this method, the effects of the "I" named storm occurring during peak season and therefore being the powerful storm that frequently needs to be retired would be at least slightly mitigated as various seasons could feature an I storm in their beginning or end. We are running out of commonly recognizable I names due to how many have been retired so far if I am not mistaken.

4. If an oddball storm were to exist in late December and early January, it could get confusing if we have pre-designated naming lists for specific years (for example, why was so-and-so storm's name from the 2021 list but existed in 2022?). By using this method, we eliminate the idea that each naming list must correspond with a certain year, and names are used whenever there is a tropical cyclone regardless of the date.

5. The WPAC, CPAC, Australia, and South Pacific basins all use rolling set of names, so this technique isn't anything alien. I understand we are used to the A-first every season idea, but I would think only meteorologists and wx enthusiasts would really pay close attention to the statistics and intricate details of each season, so if this new policy is adapted and the general public is informed on how it works as well as informed by news articles on a season's progress and the storms that form, then I have a feeling this policy could work. Not to mention names are used for the public to remember especially if the name is from a devastating storm as well as for scientific history/literature purposes, so imho I really don't think alphabetization with A first every season is as important as some people would think.


These are just my thoughts. Constructive criticism, objections, suggestions, and approvals are all warmly welcome.

There is no reason why we couldn't switch to a sequential rotation system. Outside of the two basins under NHC's responsibility, the Southwestern Indian basin is the only one that start at the letter A each year, and that basin in general isn't as active as the two North American basins. Even Central Pacific and South Atlantic - the two least active basins worldwide - use names sequentially on a rotating basis!

Yes exactly, and personally I just feel that coming up with like 2 long normal name auxiliary lists to be used depending on whether it's an even or odd year isn't as efficient as keeping lists 1-6 the way they are without changing anything and simply using them in a rolling and continuous manner (while retiring and replacing any names worthy of such without conflict). The way I see it is if all these other basins use a similar method to names storms then why can't we in the Atlantic do the same? The main purpose of a name is to allow the general public, scientists, and media to recognize a particular storm that could pose a risk to life and property as well as remember such an associated storm with ease if it is a very nasty one, and as a result I think that is way more important than knowing or worrying about what letter the storm is or what the storm number is.