Thursday, January 5, 2012

Hurricane Naming

This isn't what I started out to blog about today,but since I couldn't find the information I was looking for I ended up looking at this subject,which I kind of knew at one time but was not all that fresh in my mind. Hopefully some of you will also need a refresher.
For every year there is a pre-approved list of tropical storm and hurricane names. These lists have been generated by the National Hurricane Center since 1953. At first the lists consisted of only female names but since 1979 the lists alternate between male and female names.
Hurricanes are named alphabetically from the list in chronological order. The list contain names that begin A-W but exclude the letters Q and U. There are six lists that continue to rotate. The lists only change when there is a hurricane so devastating,the name is retired and replaced by another name.
If a tropical storm reaches a sustained wind speed of 39 miles per hour they are given a name. If a tropical storm reaches a sustained wind speed of 74 mph it then becomes "Hurricane So and So" instead of "Tropical Storm So and So". So hurricanes are not given names,tropical storms are and if they turn into hurricanes they retain their names.
What I want to know is why West Coast storms aren't named or even have a name other than storms?
In case anyone other than me is wondering about readers in Canada I finally had my first one!

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