Tropical Storm Alpha Sets Naming Record

vekron writes "Tropical Storm Alpha formed Saturday in the Caribbean, setting the record for the most named storms in an Atlantic hurricane season. This is the first time the U.S National Hurricane Center has resorted to using the Greek alphabet since it began naming tropical cyclones in 1953. The previous record of 21 named storms had stood since 1933. Alpha was the 22nd to reach tropical storm strength this year, and the season doesn't end until November 30. At 8 p.m. EDT, Alpha was 70 miles south of Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. Tropical storm warnings have been posted for the entire coastline of the Dominican Republic and Haiti and for the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The storm is moving northwest at about 15 mph with winds at the center of 40 mph and is expected to make landfall late Saturday or early Sunday. The National Hurricane Center is tracking this storm; it is offering updates about its development as an RSS feed."

Re:...so?

[eobanb]

IANAM (I Am Not A Meteorologist) but I do know that since we started paying attention to frequency/size of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Gulf about 150 years ago, we've been on an approximate 50-year cycle, where every 50 years or so, the storms get greater in magnitude. In the 1950s, there were some particularly strong storms, as were there in the 1900s, such as one storm 1902 that killed about 8000 people on the Texas coast, making it one of the worst disasters in American history. Now it's 2005, so we're around that high point again.

That said, we seem to also be having a few more hurricanes and tropical storms than usual, although I'd like to think this is more of just a coincidence than related to the magnitude cycle, although I wouldn't rule out that it could have something to do with global warming.

I'm really not completely sure why the 50-year magnitude cycle occurs, but it's well-documented.

Frequency vs. severity

[Elrac]

I heard a news commentary last night that seemed reasonably well informed to me. They said that the frequency of tropical storms (i.e. the reason they're running out of names at the moment) varies in a natural cycle which is probably not noticeably affected by temperature. On the other hand, the severity of the storms is directly a function of their energy, which they get from warm tropical water, which is directly affected by temperature.

If this is true and if global temperatures are affected by CO2 emissions, then human activity is probably causing these storms to be (on the average) more severe.

While I feel sympathy for the poor bastards suffering in NOLA and elsewhere, I feel it's a good thing that Katrina is making Americans sit up and think about possible connections between environmental cause and meteorological effect. It's human nature to tend not to think much about things that don't affect one personally. I wonder how GWB's stance on emissions would be affected if a storm were to dismantle his ranch in Crawford?

Re:A bit off-topic

[eobanb]

See, except, they DO name storms with male names. Remember Hurricane Andrew? The reason they went to the Greek alphabet was that they name the storms in alphabetical order, and once they get to the end of the alphabet, you COULD start with A again, but you wouldn't know (just from the name, at least) whether that storm occurred at the beginning or the end of the hurricane season.

Re:A bit off-topic

[Motherfucking Shit]

Just adding MALE names would give you atleast 20 more easy names. Why are storm names female? I suppose it comes from the old days when only men worked as sailors , and thus named everything female.

You might have heard of hurricanes Charley, Dennis, Frederick, or Hugo; the name pool isn't restricted to female names. Names for named tropical storms in the Atlantic are pulled from a list which rotates every six years, and the combined series of six lists contains an equal number of male and female names.

More information is available at NASA's Hurricane Names [nasa.gov] page.

Re:...so?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_Cyclone_E nergy [wikipedia.org] you will see that the total energy of this years storms is large but not record breaking. Once Wilma is accounted for the ACE should be over 200, possibly over 205. It would take another two moderately large hurricanes to drive us over the record set in 1950,

Re:...so?

[BRock97]

Actually, the Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1st to November 30th. So, there is only five weeks left, not two months. Also, less in magnitude is hard to say since Wilma set a record for the lowest pressure reading ever recorded in an Atlantic hurricane at 882mb (record lowest world wide belongs to Typhoon Tip in the northwest Pacific at 870mb). Wilma also set a record as the fastest growing. Finally, quite a few tropical storms were named that didn't make hurricane status (9, I believe) and 5 hurricanes were minimal category 1.

Re:A bit off-topic

[fcolari]

Female names started in 1953. Male names didn't show up until '79. Way back in the past it was named after the partiuclar Saint's Day in which it showed up. Ref: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/lib/reason.html [noaa.gov] "History of Hurricane Names"

Because God wants to test them

[xixax]

It's easy for the literalists:

If God Fearin' folk get hit by natural disasters, it's just like in Job and their faith is being tested.

If Godless goat sodomising strangers get hit by natural disasters, they are evil and are being righteously punished for their sins.

Simple eh?

Fortunaately most Godbotherers are intelligent enough to understand that if you chose to live in a hurricane zone, you will get the occassional hurricane.

Xix.

Re:...so?

[AngryNick]

INAME (I'm Not A Meteorologist Either). For those who like pictures, these links show the number of storms and their paths for each 10 year period. It's interesting to compare 1931-1940 to 1941-1950. Perhaps we are just getting started. Clipped from a great NOAA-National Hurricane Center [noaa.gov] report, The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Hurricanes from 1900 to 2000 [noaa.gov] :

• (1901-1910) [noaa.gov]
• (1911-1920) [noaa.gov]
• (1921-1930) [noaa.gov]
• (1931-1940) [noaa.gov]
• (1941-1950) [noaa.gov]
• (1951-1960) [noaa.gov]
• (1961-1970) [noaa.gov]
• (1971-1980) [noaa.gov]
• (1981-1990) [noaa.gov]
• (1991-2000) [noaa.gov]

Figures 1 through 10 show the landfalling portion of the tracks of major hurricanes that have struck the United States 1901-1999 (there were no major hurricane strikes on the United States in 2000). The reader might note the tendency for the major hurricane landfalls to cluster in certain areas during certain decades. Another interesting point is the tendency for this clustering to occur in the latter half of individual decades in one area and in the first half of individual decades in another area. During the very active period of the thirties this clustering is not apparent.

It appears to me that the trends are on 10-year cycles, more or less.

Re:Not to spout Zonk food, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the article, or just grab the link off a weblog? If you skipped the actual tedious reading, here's some relevant text which punnctures your flippant entire-scientific-community-dismissing pose:

Glaciers at sea level have been retreating fast because of a warming climate, making many other scientists believe the entire ice cap was thinning.

"The overall ice thickness changes are ... approximately plus 1.9 inches a year or 21.26 inches over 11 years," according to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and U.S. institutes led by Ola Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup center for Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography in Norway.

However, they said that the thickening seemed consistent with theories of global warming, blamed by most experts on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.

Warmer air, even if it is still below freezing, can carry more moisture. That extra moisture falls as snow below 32 Fahrenheit.

Re:...so?

[vondo]

They name it, same as ever. If you look at the history (http://www.weatherunderground.com/tropical/ [weatherunderground.com] is great) you'll see that named storms in December have happened maybe 1/3 the time in recent years.

Naming convention...get it right!

[SirPablo]

IAAM (I Am a Meteorologist), and I don't understand why there is so much confusion on the naming convention.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml [noaa.gov]

"Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center and now maintained and updated by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization. The lists featured only women's names until 1979, when men's and women's names were alternated. Six lists are used in rotation. Thus, the 2004 list will be used again in 2010. Here is more information on the history of naming hurricanes."

You don't have letters like Q or X because you really don't have a large pool of names to draw from (equally male and female). Once a NAME is retired, it is never used again. A LETTER is NEVER retired (though I'm not sure what they would do if a an Alpha or Beta was retired).

Names alternate male-female. The beginning sex alternates each year. The first storm this year was Arlene, the first one next year will be Alberto.

Re:...so?

[BRock97]

"There have actually been 11 storms to reach hurricane level this year."

Heh, sorry, I was on my way out to exercise this morning and was afraid that comment was a little ambiguous; I should have clarified. My point was that of the 22 named systems so far this year (up through Alpha), 14 have been relatively weak storms. Plus, the number is actually 12 to have made hurricane force, not 11. The break-down is as follows:

• Category 1: 5 (Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Stan, Vince)
• Category 2: 1 (Irene)
• Category 3: 1 (Maria)
• Category 4: 2 (Dennis, Emily)
• Category 5: 3 (Katrina, Rita, Wilma)

Re:they're used to it

[GreyPoopon]

Specifically, why is it that people turn to God for comfort after natural disasters, but seem unable to ask hard questions about why they're suffering from these "Acts of God" in the first place? And I agree; it's dumb. Millennia of apologists have come up with ever-more-baroque philosophical explanations for the Problem of Suffering (both natural and man-made) and not a single one of them has ever arrived at a convincing answer.

The explanation that makes the most sense is that bad things happen to everyone, regardless of what they believe or how good they are. Based on the Bible, if God really wants to eliminate the wicked, He does a pretty thorough job of it. Examples: Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19), the flood (Genesis 6-8), Jericho (Joshua 6). When God is punishing sinners, He general sends a warning first, so that there's no doubt about why things are happening (see pretty much everything that happened to Israel in the Old Testament). Therefore, anybody who wants to speculate about the nature of those who are suffering the hardships of hurricanes and tornados needs to take a closer look at the Bible. Although the people living in New Orleans, Texas and Mississipi may have done many things wrong, the hurricanes were not natural consequences (except possibly of pollution), and I doubt that they were the vengeance of God.

Re:...so?

[Derek Pomery]

Here's the big picture [noaa.gov]
Note, this graph does not yet include 2005, so we can look forward to another spike.

Re:...so?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also a oft-repeated special on the History Channel intitled "Isaac's Storm" that covers the majority of the background and happenings during the storm.

Re:Frequency vs. severity

[Just Some Guy]

I wonder how GWB's stance on emissions would be affected if a storm were to dismantle his ranch in Crawford?

Since Crawford is about 250 miles inland, if circumstances were such that a hurricane powerful enough to level it came about, then he'd be too busy dying with the rest of the world to have time to think about it. Same reason I don't have flood insurance on my house: if I ever actually needed it, I'd be too busy building an ark to care.

Re:It's just because they're unimaginative.

[iabervon]

Actually, they have names for X, Y, and Z, but only for Northern East Pacific storms (and they're on a 2-year, rather than 6-year, cycle). Beats me as to why they've got 24 names for the Pacific side and 21 for the Atlantic side, when almost all of the storms in these areas are on the Atlantic (which is an east coast, and also has the big cyclone-generating area); all the major Pacific storms are in other parts of the ocean, where they get names from a different list.

Re:CAPS

[zerofret]

The all caps format on forecast products is a policy requirement. The applicable policy can be found at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/directives/010/pd01017001a .pdf [noaa.gov].

The reason for the policy requirement is backward compatability. The first electronically disseminated weather forecasts were in the days of the ASR-33 teletype machine. Over time commercial software was developed that would decode the forecasts and build screen crawls for TV stations. Since much of the old software is still out there, and there may even be some ASR-33's, the products have to remain in all caps in order to not break the legacy stuff.

What really annoys me about the requirement for all caps, is that the meteorologists leave the caps lock on when they leave the workstations. I usually type in a command or two before I realize nothing happened other than linux reminding me that LL, CAT and GREP are not valid commands.