The Naming of Hurricanes: Part Four

We’ve discussed a few theories on when the naming of storms began, but the “informal practice of naming tropical storms became institutionalized in 1950, when the U.S. Weather Bureau identified tropical cyclones of the North Atlantic Ocean using a phonetic alphabet.” This system was used until 1953, when the names switched from the phonetic alphabet to women’s names. If you’ve never noticed before, the list actually stops short of q, u, x, y and z, because there are not a lot of names that begin with these letters.

“Tropical cyclones near Hawaii and the Pacific were given women’s names starting in 1959 and, beginning in 1960, tropical cyclones in the remainder of the Northeast Pacific basin were also nicknamed with women’s names.”

Why only women’s names?

Eventually pressure was placed on the World Meteorological Organization to include men’s names and on July 10, 1979, the first Atlantic hurricane named with a male name was “Bob.”

What happens if a storm moves into another area with different names?

“In October of 1988, after Atlantic hurricane Joan savagely struck Central America, it proceeded to move into the Pacific and became Pacific tropical storm Miriam.”

Source: Freaks of the Storm by Dr. Randy Cerveny