List of Historic Tropical Cyclone Names - North Atlantic

North Atlantic

By 1950 tropical cyclones that were judged by the US Weather Bureau to have intensified into a tropical storm, started to be assigned names. Storms were originally named in alphabetical order using the World War II version of the Phonetic Alphabet. By 1952 a new phonetic alphabet had been developed and this led to confusion as some parties wanted to use the newer phonetic alphabet. In 1953, to alleviate any confusion, forecasters decided to use a set of 23 feminine names. After the 1953 Atlantic hurricane season, public reception to the idea seemed favorable, so the same list was adopted for the next year with one change; Gilda for Gail. However after storms like Carol and Hazel got a lot of publicity during the 1953 season, forecasters agreed to develop a new set of names for 1955. However before this could happen, a tropical storm was declared significant on January 2, 1955 and was named as Alice. The new set of names were developed and used in 1955 beginning with Brenda continuing through the alphabet to Zelda. For each season before 1960, a new set of names were developed. In 1960 forecasters decided to begin rotating names in a regular sequence and thus four alphabetical lists were established to be repeated every four years. The sets followed the example of the western Pacific typhoon naming lists and excluded names beginning with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z. These four lists were used until 1972 when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), replaced them with 9 lists designed to be used from 1972. In 1977, NOAA made the decision to relinquish control over the name selection by allowing a regional committee of the World Meteorological Organization to select the new sets of names which would contain male names and some Spanish and French names in order to reflect all the cultures and languages within the Atlantic Ocean. The World Meteorological Organization decided that the new lists of hurricane name would start to be used in 1979. Since 1979 the same lists have been used, with names of significant tropical cyclones removed from the lists and replaced with new names. In 2002 Subtropical Cyclones started to be assigned names from the main list of names set up for that year. In 2005 as all the names preselected for the season were exhausted, the contingency plan of using Greek letters for names had to be used. Since then there have been a few attempts to get rid of the Greek names, as they are seen to be inconsistent with the standard naming convention used for tropical cyclones and are considered generally unknown and confusing to the public. However the lists of preselected names for the year, are not expected to be used up frequently enough to warrant any change in the existing naming procedure and thus the Greek Alphabet will be used if the list of pre selected names should ever be used up again.