What is the name of the next tropical storm in the Atlantic? What other names are on the 2022 list?
2022 has seen three named tropical storms and with a dozen more expected before the end of the season, expect to see a number more named in the press.
August was a relatively safe month for tropical storms and hurricanes with no new named storms in the US. So far there have been three named tropical storms in 2022: Alex, Bonnie, and Colin.
But with a chance of a tropical storm crashing into US shores for Labor Day weekend, September 5, it may be a necessity for more tropical storms to be named. This is done by the National Hurricane Center, saying that giving storms short, distinctive names is quicker and less confusing than the older method of using latitude-longitude coordinates.
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What about the rest of 2022?
There are still plenty of large tropical storms expected in 2022. AccuWeather, weather prediction specialists, say it is more than likely September will see many more than August and as many as 17 more named storms by the end of November. This includes eight hurricanes.
Expect to see these names pop up in the news as the storms roll through: Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Ian, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Martin, Nicole, Owen, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tobias, Virginie, and Walter.
How are the names decided?
The World Meteorological Organization (the body responsible for naming tropical storms in the US) has a pre-prepared list each year of 21 potential storm names, listed from A to W. There are no names corresponding to Q, U, X, Y or Z because of availability.
According to the National Hurricane Center, for Atlantic hurricanes there is a list of names for each of six years, or in other words, every seventh year one list is repeated. The only time that there is a change in a name on one of these lists is if a storm turns out to be so deadly or costly that its use on a future storm would be insensitive. These names are ‘retired’ and replaced in time for the next round.
In 2020, the WMO came up against an unusual problem: they’ve run out of storm names. Instead they have turned to the Greek alphabet so the storm hitting Texas and Louisiana this week is called Beta, rather than a ‘regular’ name. The only other time this has happened before was 15 years ago in 2005, when six letters of the Greek alphabet had to be used: Tropical Storm Alpha, Hurricane Beta, Tropical Storm Gamma, Topical Storm Delta, Hurricane Epsilon and Tropical Storm Zeta.
Nowadays, each of the 6 lists alternate between male and female names; 2023 starting with Arlene, 2024 with Alberto, and so on. The names are maintained and updated by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization.