This year’s Atlantic hurricane season is likely to overwhelm the federal naming system by churning out more than 21 storms, which is the most recorded in the past 154 years, a Colorado hurricane expert said.
Beyond Rita, there are only four official hurricane names left for the year, said Keli Tarp of the National Hurricane Center. They are Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma.
If more storms form, the center would begin using Greek letters: Hurricane Alpha, Hurricane Beta and so on, she said.
Bill Gray, a longtime hurricane forecaster at Colorado State University, said that seems almost certain, given there are two months left in the hurricane season.
“I got into the field in the ’50s, after a series of years with lots of hurricanes, and there was a lot of (grant) money around,” Gray said. “Then the storms stopped coming, and now they’re finally coming again, and I’m 75.”
The National Hurricane Center and the World Meteorological Organization generate alphabetical lists of 21 names for every hurricane season – current lists go up to 2010.
The letters q, u, x, y and z are not used, and the organizations alternate men’s and women’s names. Next year, the first hurriance will be called Alberto.
Gray called the destructive past two hurricane seasons a case of “luck running out.”
“Between 1995 and 2003, we had 32 Atlantic basin storms, of which only three hit the U.S.,” he said. “The normal ratio is 1 in 3 or 3 1/2.”
Gray dismisses the idea that global warming has increased the intensity of hurricanes, saying instead that natural climate swings are responsible for the stormy hurricane seasons of the past several years.
“In 1915, there was a Category 4 storm that went just west of Houston as Rita will likely do, and another Category 4 that went just west of New Orleans.
“You occasionally have this. It’s an unfortunate calamity of nature.”
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
