Numbers in the News: Naming Storms

The year the U.S. National Hurricane Center began naming storms to make it quicker and easier to identify and alert people in a storm’s path.

The number of names created each year to identify Atlantic storms. Historically, if a season surpassed 21 storms, additional storms were named after letters of the Greek alphabet, like Alpha, Beta, and Gamma.

The year in which scientists stopped using the Greek alphabet to identify storms beyond 21. They’ll instead use an additional list of 21 names. 

The number of storm names, including Harvey and Sandy, retired since 1954. Names are not reused if storms were particularly destructive or deadly.

_{^{SOURCES: WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION}}