The Hurricane Committee of the World Meteorological Organization met virtually back in March to discuss the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season and what changes needed to be made.
One topic brought up was what to do with the Greek alphabet going forward.
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The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was only the second year to use Greek names. The season showed there were a number of shortcomings with the use of the Greek alphabet.
First off, there was too much focus on the Greek names themselves and not the actual impacts of the storm. This took away from safety messaging.
There was confusion with the Greek names translating into other languages.
Some of the names sound very similar, leading to confusion.
Lastly, the impacts of both Eta and Iota last year were severe enough to retire the names, but the WMO has no formal plan of retiring Greek names and reusing them would be inappropriate.
As a result, the WMO came up with a “supplemental list” of names to be used once the list of 21 names is exhausted.
This list of names will be the same each year. If the storm is deadly or devastating, the name on the list can be retired and replaced.
The supplemental names for the Atlantic basin include the following:
- Adria
- Braylen
- Caridad
- Deshawn
- Emery
- Foster
- Gemma
- Heath
- Isla
- Jacobus
- Kenzie
- Lucio
- Makayla
- Nolan
- Orlanda
- Pax
- Ronin
- Sophie
- Tayshaun
- Viviana
- Will