Hurricane Names In Short Supply As Peak Season Arrives

MIAMI, FL — Much like toilet paper and Clorox wipes, 2020 may be remembered as the year we ran out of one other thing during the coronavirus pandemic — hurricane names.

"I believe we're three or four letters away from potentially going into the Greek system," Meteorologist In Charge Pablo Santos of the National Weather Service in Miami said in an interview with Patch.

Thursday marked the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season and 2020 has more than lived up to expectations for a busier than normal year.

Don't miss 2020 hurricane updates in Florida as they are announced. Sign up for Patch news alerts and newsletters.

To recap, we've already run through the names Arthur, Bertha, Cristobal, Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna, Isaias, Josephine, Kyle, Laura, Marco, Nana and Omar while Tropical Storms Paulette and Rene were churning in the Atlantic this week.

While neither storm appeared to pose a threat to the United States as of Thursday, Paulette was forecast to become a hurricane as it approaches Bermuda Sunday and Rene was forecast to become a hurricane a day earlier.

Weather forecasters were also monitoring three other systems that had the potential to become named storms as of Thursday — one over the north-central Gulf of Mexico, another a couple hundred miles east of the central Bahamas and a third system a few hundred miles southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands.

There are only four names left — Sally, Teddy, Vicky and Wilfred — for the remainder of the hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30.

"I think that the odds are looking better and better that we're going to run out of letters," Santos acknowledged.

The last time this happened was in 2005, the year of Emily, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

"If we run out of the last name of the list of hurricanes certified for this season, then the next storm — if we have another one — would be called Alpha and the following Beta," Santos said. "Wilma was the last named storm of the season, then we had Tropical Storm Alpha, Hurricane Beta, Tropical Storm Gamma, Tropical Storm Delta, Hurricane Epsilon, Tropical Storm Zeta."

Storm names are retired if they were so deadly or destructive that the future use of the name would be insensitive — otherwise names are reused on a six-year cycle.

Santos said Greek letters have never been retired as far as he knows.

Sept. 10 is considered the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, according to Dennis Feltgen of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"What does this mean? When you go back through reliable records which begin in 1851, this date is the one that most often had a named storm in the Atlantic basin," he told Patch. "The peak of the hurricane season, when the majority of activity occurs, is from mid-August through late October."

Santos said people who live in evacuation zones should always be prepared with a plan of where they would go if ordered to evacuate. They should have everything they need to secure their homes, make sure insurance is up to date and keep sufficient medical supplies on hand, including any prescription medication.

"We don't want people to be flooding the roads, fleeing, running away unless they absolutely have to," he said. "Know where you are going to evacuate if evacuation orders are issued for your area. Don't wait until there is a storm knocking on your door."