What’s In a Name? The Greek Alphabet for the Rest of the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season

As you know, we have blown through the regular list of names for the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season at a record pace, and today, we have used the last regular name… Wilfred.

Now we start on the list of names taken from the Greek alphabet. Those names are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi, Omega.

And, of course, you know that Alpha was used earlier today as a subtropical storm formed off of the coast of Portugal and will move onshore shortly. If no other disturbances decide to get jumpy and quickly get organized, then Tropical Depression 22 will get the name Beta when it strengthens into a tropical storm.

There has been one time in recorded history that we have needed to use some of the names from the Greek alphabet, and that was during the most active hurricane season to date in 2005. That year, we made it as far as Zeta… that would make the count of 27 named storms. Four of those hurricane names were retired: Dennis, Rita, Wilma, and Katrina.

In case if you are wondering… if a hurricane with a Greek alphabet name is deemed worthy to be retired, it would go down in the history books as the Greek name with the year of occurrence (example: Alpha-2020).

Category: ALL POSTS, Tropical