The peak of this year's Atlantic Ocean hurricane season, the period with the highest chance of seeing a full-scale hurricane north of the equator, will occur the week of September 10, according to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center.
While the latest hurricane, Erika, has regressed back into a tropical storm, forecasters are watching Hurricane Fred, and after Fred could come Hurricanes Grace, Henri and Ida.
How do storm trackers already have names for hurricanes that have yet to appear?
A variety of naming systems have been used over the years. When hurricanes in the West Indies formed on a saint's day, they were named for that particular saint, such as "Hurricane San Felipe." Meteorologists later began using the hurricanes' latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates.
In an effort to reduce confusion, forecasters eventually began using names again, instead of numbers. During World War II, naming hurricanes exclusively after women became the common practice for hurricanes in the Pacific Ocean.
For a two-year period (1951-1953), meteorologists in the United States attempted to use names such as "Able," "Baker" and "Charlie," drawn from a phonetic alphabet system, but then chose to return to the system of using real names, focusing primarily on female ones. This practice continued until 1978, when meteorologists began alternating male and female names for hurricanes occurring in the Pacific Ocean, and in 1979 for hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.
An international committee of the World Meteorological Organization is now responsible for the lists of hurricane names, and rotates through six lists. If the number of hurricanes in the season exceeds the number of names allotted, the Greek alphabet will be used, such as "Hurricane Alpha."
According to the Web site for WTOC11 in Georgia, if a hurricane has tremendous and devastating results, its name will be pulled from the list. For example, Hurricane Katrina was replaced with Hurricane Katia in preparation for the 2011 season.
The first record of a hurricane in the Atlantic can be found in ancient Mayan hieroglyphics. The word "hurricane" comes from the name of the Mayan god "Hurakan." According to Mayan legends, Hurakan was the one to bring forth land out of the water, and also could use water to create storms and floods to destroy mankind.
For more in-depth detail about hurricanes, visit the National Hurricane Center's Web site.
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Brittany Stoner
Fox Weather Correspondent
Penn State University, Print Journalism and Spanish
