There have been so many storms in the Atlantic Ocean this year that the National Hurricane Center has used up all 21 available names, the third time in recorded history that has happened.
Subtropical storm Wanda, which formed this weekend and isn’t expected to make landfall, was the last name on the list. The last two times all names were used were last year, when there were 30 named storms in the Atlantic, and in 2005, when there were 28 named storms, including Hurricane Katrina, which pummeled New Orleans.
Naming storms is meant to make it easier to discuss them and communicate with the public. The National Hurricane Center has named storms since 1953, in a process that is now run by the World Meteorological Organization. When a storm has winds of 39 miles an hour or more, the National Hurricane Center chooses an Atlantic storm from a list set for that year. Each list has 21 names. The names are used again every six years, but if a storm is extremely destructive or deadly, that name is retired for good, like in the case of Katrina.
In the past, when the 21 names were used up, the National Hurricane Center would name any other storms after the Greek alphabet. But that is no longer the case after 2020, when Hurricanes Zeta, Eta and Theta caused confusion because they sounded too much alike, and the public focused more on the names than the destruction the storms caused, according to Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center.