The 2007 hurricane names

In this blog’s traffic stats, the post where I described the “algorithm for naming hurricanes” is one of the most popular.

I get a lot of visits from people who live in the Caribbean and North America, and I appreciate it. Many want to know how hurricanes get their names.

I hear that Dean is about to reach the highest category.

The name tells me we are looking at the fourth tropical storm of this year, although this is the first hurricane of the season.

Mind you, it’s the first hurricane and it is already entering category 5.

2005 set a record with 28 tropical storms and 15 hurricanes. In fact, for the first time they ran off the end of the predefined table of hurricane names and ended up using Greek letters, with Zeta being the last storm of that year (it even lasted into January 2006).

Since that year produced major hurricanes, the names Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan, and Wilma were retired from the official lists, and will be replaced in 2011 by Don, Katia, Rina, Sean, and Whitney, respectively.

The hurricane names for this year are:

2007
Andrea
Barry
Chantal
Dean
Erin
Felix
Gabrielle
Humberto
Ingrid
Jerry
Karen
Lorenzo
Melissa
Noel
Olga
Pablo
Rebekah
Sebastien
Tanya
Van
Wendy