At a Glance
- The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.
- Atlantic storm name lists repeat every six years unless a name is retired from future use.
- The 2020 list is identical to the one used in 2014.
This season’s first named storm will be Arthur, which kicked off the 2014 season in early July and was the earliest hurricane on record to make landfall in North Carolina when it came ashore as a Category 2 between Cape Lookout and Beaufort on the night of July 3.
Atlantic storm name lists are maintained by a committee of the World Meteorological Organization and repeat every six years unless a hurricane or storm is so destructive and/or deadly that the committee votes to retire use of a name.
None of the storms or hurricanes from 2014 were retired, so the 2020 list is identical to the one used six years ago. Isaias and Paulette were new to this list in 2014 – replacing Ike and Paloma from 2008, which were retired – but 2014 was so inactive that those names have not yet been used.
“Remarkably, of the 126 hurricane names included in the original six naming lists (from 1979), 55% remain on to this day,” tweeted Michael Lowry, a FEMA strategic planner and former hurricane specialist for The Weather Channel.
This means an average Atlantic storm name is about 30 years old, which explains why many of the hurricane names seem rather old fashioned or outdated.
Atlantic Basin tropical cyclones are named when maximum sustained winds reach at least 39 mph – tropical storm status.
On average, 12 named storms form in a given season, six of which become hurricanes and three of which become major hurricanes, those that pack winds of at least Category 3 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
If it’s an average season, that would take the list through the “L” storm.
Often this past decade, there’s been a much deeper dive into the list. Nineteen storms occurred in 2010, 2011 and 2012. In 2019, 18 storms became tropical storms or hurricanes, which tied for the fourth-most-active season on record by the number of named storms, getting to the “S” name for the first time since 2012.
Only two seasons in the 2010s were below average: 2014 had eight named storms, and 2015 had 11 named storms.
If all 21 names are used up in a season and another name is needed, the National Hurricane Center would then begin using letters from the Greek alphabet.
That has happened only once in the history of naming tropical cyclones. In the record-smashing 2005 season, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta had to be used. Tropical Storm Zeta formed on Dec. 30, 2005, and carried into early January 2006, more than a month after the official end of the season.
The official start of the hurricane season is June 1. The NHC selected the June 1 to Nov. 30 dates for the hurricane season because they encompass more than 97% of tropical cyclones.
But as last year showed, there’s a reason those dates only account for 97% of storms; Andrea made a brief appearance to the southwest of Bermuda May 20-21, 2019.
THE WEATHER CHANNEL
