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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."
When they said "we'll have to use Greek letters if we run out", I assumed that they meant "use Greek names starting with the appropriate letters" (and use the Greek letters themselves as the single-character symbols on maps). Names "Athena", "Basileus", "Chronos", "Dionysus", etc. would have been really neat for tropical storms, and they'd have helped to make people more familiar with classical mythology as well.
But no, apparently they're just using the Greek letters themselves. Quite apart from being unimaginative... what happens if Hurricane Epsilon is particularly destructive and NOAA decides to retire the name? They can hardly retire a letter of the Greek alphabet.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
But why did they start using the Greek Alphabet? I mean there are more then 21 names ( Rita , Katrina etc. ) so why not just continue naming them the same way?
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.
Someone with a bit of backround in the thema can help , maybe?
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
I'm not sure why the Stock market goes up when the NFC wins the Super Bowl, but I'm a pretty firm believer in imaginary correlations.
I've lived in the American Midwest (Colorado and Illinois). They're a tough breed. You don't stay if you're scared of big storms, or worry that they're a personal message from God.
Oh, please. I've been a Midwesterner most of my life (Colorado, North Dakota, and now Minnesota; BTW, whether Colorado is "Midwest" or just "West" is debatable, but there's no question about the other two) and people here are no more a "tough breed" than anywhere else. Every place on Earth has its hardships, and overall the life here is a lot easier than it is in a lot of other places. It's also a matter of what you, personally, find most tolerable -- blizzards and tornadoes, I can deal with, but basic training in the Georgia summer damn near killed me. A lot of my family lives on the Gulf Coast, and I think they're nuts for staying, given the way things are going, but then, they think I'm nuts for voluntarily living somewhere that regularly sees temperatures of -40 F. Etc.
Anyway. The question of "toughness" is a straw man; the GP poster's question was about faith. 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 correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I'm really not completely sure why the 50-year magnitude cycle occurs, but it's well-documented.
A 50 year cycle is confirmed after only 150 years of bookkeeping? This doesn't sound like a very solid prediction scheme. I'll stick with industry fueled climate change as the most likely suspect until I see hard data to the contrary.
May the Maths Be with you!
Sure, you can swap one Voodoo prediction for another, no problem.
There wern't 21 named storms in 1933; there were just 21 storms. If they were naming storms back then, they would've gone through an entire list like we did this year. The point is that was the most tropical storms/hurricanes in a season ever recorded -- until now.
OK. Now come up with six of each since it's a six year rotation. Oh, and better make that eight in case some get retired. Oh, and please make sure that four of those are men's names and four are women's names.
what happens when there are a shitload of hurricanes in 2105?
you're the one responsible for the y2k problem, aren't you?
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at200513.asp
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at200514.asp
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at200509.asp
All of you screaming global warming need to relax. There is still alot of research to be done, it's not as clean cut as you think. As many others have mentioned, there are many background signals/cycles that occur in the ocean/atmosphere. Maybe there are a few cycles which just happen to coincide this year, resulting in strong positive reinforcement. Correlation != Causation