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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."
Tropical Storm Aleph?
If you start spouting off about global warming now, on either side, Zonk wins.
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.
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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.
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They can't come up with names beginning with X, Y, and Z.
H.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
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?
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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.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
More information is available at NASA's Hurricane Names page.
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If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_Cyclone_E nergy 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,
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.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
... because we're going to need that money to pay for all the storm damage we've been getting lately...
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
They name storms and hurricanes after women because when they come, they're loud and wet, and when they leave, they take your house and car.
Like all forms of suffering, you can just play the "Mysterious Ways" trump card, and be instantly absolved of explaining why a being that is supposedly omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent permits suffering to happen.
The obvious logical explanation is that either there is no such being ; either it is absent or a supernatural sentience does exist, but lacks at least one of those three qualities (i.e. it doesn't know, can't do anything about it or doesn't care).
Of course, logical arguments are usually countered with the "La-la-la, I'm not listening." move or the "Repeat my viewpoint over and over again in lieu of actually providing a chain of logic" tactic.
You could proabably make a trading card game based on this ... "Atheists vs <insert most culturally appropriate religion here>". Heck, you could have different sets of booster packs for each religion. I hereby patent this idea!
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I hope hurricane Beta is extremely powerful. Then I can say "Wow... That Hurricane must have been really buggy..."
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such as one storm 1902 that killed about 8000 people on the Texas coast, making it one of the worst disasters in American history.
Actually it was 1900, and it was the city of Galveston which was hit, and the high death toll was largely due to the fact that nobody was evacuated, and this was due in part to a turf war between the weather forecast offices in Galveson and Cuba.
"Isaac's Storm" written Erik Larson chronicles this storm and the events leading up to it. Highly recommended.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
They should just number them
Well, I'm just glad that you can come here to 66.35.250.151 and post your comments! I mean, the 66.35.250.151 crowd will definitely know where you're coming from. I was about to wish you'd mentioned a couple of other web sites in your discussion of the non-naming of Japanese storms, but it's just as well, since we wouldn't want those sites to get 66.35.250.151'ed.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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
"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.
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:
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
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!
Keep in mind that the records only go back to the early 1900s when the hall of records was mysteriously blown away.
Why is anything anything?
Hurricane Pepsi has strengthened to a "category 5 delicous" and is expected to be refreshing residents of the Florida coast by early Tuesday morning.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Sure, you can swap one Voodoo prediction for another, no problem.
You have three complete cycles. That is more then enough for the Nyquist Limit
This cycle is known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The theory is that this is caused by interference effect between the sunspot cylces and El Nino/La Nina.
And this would seem to affect fishery catches fishery catches
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First, the Nyquist limit is inapplicable. It is not a valid tool for fitting a periodic relation to data.
Second, the PDO is completely irrelevant when one is discussing increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic. In the Atlantic, only one periodic effect is widely observed, and that is the North Atlantic oscillation. The NAO, as the name might suggest, does not have an effect on hurricanes in the South, its period is not the same as the possible periodic hurricane effect, and it changed phase in the 80s making it exceedingly unlikely that the two events are actually related in any meaningful way. Even the Antarctic Cirumpolar wave is most likely irrelevant, as it has a period of four years and directly effects only the South Atlantic. There may very well be another effect in the Atlantic, but three cycles is most certainly not enough to definitively say. Climatologists accept the PDO because it has been observed in data going back to 1661. Until sufficient evidence is provided for this Atlantic effect, we must not presume that it exists. It may simply be coincidence.
Pax Digitalia
Yes, we're going to see some "OMG! There are so many storms this year! It's global warming! Oh noes!!1!". It's inevitable with an article like this, so I'd just like to give my two cents on these multitude of storms and "global warming":
What gets me is all of these "record breaking lows/highs" and along with it comes "it hasn't been this hot/cold/stormy/etc since (insert 30 to 70 year old year here)". Well what was the excuse back then? Seasons and temperatures fluctuate all the time. Records aren't broken every day, nor every year...they just get randomly broken.
So please explain to me why exactly, when referring to 1933, there were 21 storms back then - was it global warming? No.
Before you mod this flamebait or troll, I'm just trying to make a logical point. I'm not a believer or non-believer of global warming, I just get sick of the years-ago referrals as if it were significant without someone thinking it out logically and using it for their "global warming" agenda.
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