Hurricanes

[andrewlee]

Who gives them their names, and how are the names chosen?

[irisred]

They are named alphabetically as they occur and apparently if there they get to that many this year there will be a hurricaine Vince!

[c00ky83]

The reason it went from Katrina to Rita is that from L to Q would have been tropical storms which never reached land and never reached hurricane standard.  Just in case anyone asked!

[Artemis]

In the normal course of events, male and female names are used in alternative years. As irisred  says this year we may come to the end of the alphabet for female names and they will start on the male. Also all really bad storms (Katrina and Andrew), the names are retired and never used again. 

[Xollob]

Excellent article in today's Guardian about just this topic.

Apparently, when they run out of names - which has not yet happened in the 60 or so years they have been using the system - they switch to the letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha, beta etc.).

[CheekyChops]

We won't run out of female names and start on male next year...There is a six year rotating list of names and the names are used alternately, male and female.

i.e 2005 we have:  Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Dennis, Emily etc, all the way up to Z.

2006 will have: Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto and so on.

The list from 2005 be used again in 2011, the 2006 list will be used again in 2012.  Unless - as has already been mentioned - a name is retired due to a particularly damaging or bad hurricane.

See Here for more info.