Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Erika, and Fred. Do these names sound familiar?
They should. These are the names of the first 6 named storms of the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season.
But do you know how hurricane names are chosen? Or did you know that hurricanes were only given women's names from 1953 to 1978?
We'll get to the second one later, but let's start with why hurricanes are named.
The answer may surprise you. Hurricanes have names because it makes things easy. If a hurricane was identified by its longitude and latitude coordinates, the public would be lost. And meteorologists would have a hard time explaining what was going on in the tropics.
If there were two storms occurring at the same time and they were moving in different directions, the confusion would increase. A storm advisory for one storm could be mistaken for another storm and send cities into a panic.
It's more simple to talk about Ana moving northeast and Bill moving to the southwest.
So, hurricanes have names because it's easier that way, but how are the names chosen?
In the beginning, there was no system in place to name storms. Names were given to storms arbitrarily. One storm that ripped the mast off of a boat named Antje was known as Antje's hurricane.
Later, seeking a more organized system, meteorologists began naming storms based on an alphabetically arranged list. The original plan was to use a phonetic alphabet, so storms would be named Able, Baker, Charlie, etc.
After two years, the plan was changed. In 1953, meteorologists started using names from a list that was planned by the National Hurricane Center.
Under the new plan, only women's names were used to identify storms. Then, in 1979, men's names were added to the lists.
Now, the lists are maintained by a committee of the World Meteorological Organization.
There are 6 lists of names for the Pacific and 6 lists of names for the Atlantic that are rotated every year, so 2009's list will be used in 2015.
(Information from the National Hurricane Center and the World Meteorological Organization contributed to this report.)
