Tropical Cyclone Naming History and Retired Names (2024)

Reason to Name Hurricanes

Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive names inwritten as well as spoken communications is quicker and less subject to errorthan the older, more cumbersome latitude-longitudeidentification methods. These advantages are especiallyimportant in exchanging detailed storm information betweenhundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases, and ships atsea.

The use of easily remembered names greatly reduces confusionwhen two or moretropical storms occur at the same time. For example, one hurricane canbe moving slowly westward in the Gulf of Mexico, while at exactlythe same time another hurricane can be moving rapidly northward alongthe Atlantic coast. In the past, confusion and false rumors have arisenwhen storm advisories broadcast from radio stations were mistaken for warningsconcerning an entirely different storm located hundreds of miles away.

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History of Hurricane Names

For several hundred years many hurricanes in the West Indieswere named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricaneoccurred. Ivan R. Tannehill describes in his book "Hurricanes"the major tropical storms of recorded history and mentions manyhurricanes named after saints. For example, there was "HurricaneSanta Ana" which struck Puerto Rico with exceptional violence onJuly 26, 1825, and "San Felipe" (the first) and "San Felipe" (thesecond) which hit Puerto Rico on September 13 in both 1876 and1928.

Tannehill also tells of Clement Wragge, an Australianmeteorologist who began giving women's names to tropical stormsbefore the end of the 19th century.

An early example of the use of a woman's name for a storm wasin the novel "Storm" by George R. Stewart, published by RandomHouse in 1941, and since filmed by Walt Disney. During World WarII this practice became widespread in weather map discussionsamong forecasters, especially Army and Navy meteorologistswho plotted the movements of storms over the wide expanses of thePacific Ocean.

In 1953, the United States abandoned a confusing two-yearold plan to name storms by a phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie)when a new, international phonetic alphabet was introduced. That year,the United States began using female names for storms.

The practice of naming hurricanes solely after women came toan end in 1978 when men's and women's names were included in theEastern North Pacific storm lists. In 1979, male and female nameswere included in lists for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

Retired Hurricane Names Since 1954

The NHC does not control the naming of tropical storms.Instead a strict procedure has been established by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization.

For Atlantic hurricanes, there is a list of names for each of six years.In other words, one list is repeated every sixth year. The only time that there isa change is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of itsname on a different storm would be inappropriate for obvious reasons ofsensitivity. If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the committee(called primarily to discuss many other issues) the offending name isstricken from the list and another name is selected to replace it.

There is an exception to the retirement rule, however.Before 1979, when the first permanent six-year storm name list began, somestorm names were simply not used anymore. For example, in 1966, "Fern" wassubstituted for "Frieda," and no reason was cited.

Below is a list of retired names for the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea,and the Gulf of Mexico. There are, however, a great number of destructivestorms not included on this list because they occurred before the hurricanenaming convention was established in 1950.

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Retired Atlantic Names by Year

Alphabetical List of Retired Atlantic Names

Retired Central and Eastern North Pacific Names by Year

Alphabetical List of Retired Central and Eastern North Pacific Names

Alternate Name List

In the event that more than twenty-one named tropical cyclones occur in the Atlantic basin in a season, or more than twenty-four named tropical cyclones in the eastern North Pacific basin, any additional storms will take names from an alternate list of names approved by the WMO for each basin. This naming convention has been established by the World Meteorological Organization Tropical Cyclone Programme.