User:Jason Rees/Atlantic names

Phonetic
During the first half of the 20th century, the United States Weather Bureau did not consider it necessary to name tropical cyclones in weather bulletins, as it was rare that more than one tropical cyclone existed at one time. Some tropical cyclones were unofficially named though after a variety of things such as places they hit, saints of the Roman Catholic Church, ships and people. During the latter stages of the Second World War, forecasters associated with the United States Armed Forces started to informally name tropical cyclones in the Pacific, after their wives and girlfriends as it was found to reduce confusion during map discussions. A request was subsequently made for the United States Weather Bureau to start assigning names to tropical cyclones, however, this request was rejected as it was deemed not to be appropriate in dealing with US public.

In 1947, the United States Air Weather Service started to name tropical cyclones using the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet, however, the usage of these names was restricted to internal communications and were not used in public bulletins. During September 1950, three tropical cyclones

1951
T

At the start of 1951, the United States Air Coordinating Committee for Meteorology decided to publically identify hurricanes using the phonetic alphabet.

During the 1952 season, the naming scheme ran into problems after a new international phonetic alphabet had been developed and started to be used by a few of the responsible agencies in their communications. At the end of the season no agreement could be reached over which phonetic alphabet should be used, before the military members of the Air Coordinating Committee for Meteorology suggested that the agencies should follow the lead of the Pacific and name tropical cyclones after women. After a lot of discussion, the committee adopted an alphabetical list of 23 female names for use during the 1953 season, with the letters X, Y and Z skipped, as there had only ever been a maximum of 21 tropical cyclones recorded in the Atlantic Ocean during a season. The list of names was thought to have worked well during the mild but active 1953 season as there were no destructive hurricanes, while the names were used in other countries and newspapers thought that the naming scheme was colourful. Public reception to the idea seemed to be favourable, with the United States Weather Bureau receiving letters and telephone calls containing suggestions for new names. As a result, the same list of names was adopted for 1954 with the name Gail changed to Gilda, as the term gale was widely used at the time in both tropical and extratropical storm warnings.

Origins
From 1950 the United States Weather Bureau (USWB), began to assign names to tropical cyclones that were judged to have intensified into tropical storms. Storms were originally named in alphabetical order using the World War II version of the Phonetic Alphabet. In 1953 a new set of 23 women's names were developed, to avoid any confusion as a secondary phonetic alphabet had been developed. After the active but mild 1953 Atlantic hurricane season, public reception to the idea seemed favorable, so the same list was adopted for the next year with only one change; Gilda for Gail. After storms like Carol and Hazel got a lot of publicity during the 1954 season, forecasters developed a new set of names in time for the 1955 season. However before this could happen, a tropical storm developed on January 2 1955 and was named as Alice. The new set of names was developed and were used during 1955 beginning with Brenda and continued through the alphabet to Zelda. For each season before 1960, a new set of names was developed before in 1960 forecasters decided to begin rotating names in a regular sequence and thus four alphabetical lists were established to be repeated every four years.

These four lists were used until 1972 when National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), replaced them with nine lists designed to be used annually from 1972.

1960
Ahead of the 1960 Atlantic hurricane season, after conducting some research into figuring out if a naming scheme with more scientific contentations or the phonetic alphabet would be better, the United States Weather Bureau decided to introduce four new lists of female names that would rotate from year to year.

They also decided to retire for 10 years the names of any major hurricane that impacted the United States, which was thought to be enough time for people to have forgotten about the system's reputation.

1967
NHC's creation

Male/Female names
At its seventh session in April and May 1977, the World Meteorological Organization's Regional Association IV noted the need for a well-coordinated hurricane warning system for the region and decided to establish the RA IV Hurricane Committee. The association suggested that the committee should discuss the naming of hurricanes at its first session, with an eye to including names that were simple and easily pronounceable within the region as well as male and female names from the Dutch, English, Spanish and French languages. In January 1978, the 32nd session of the Interdepartmental Hurricane Committee proposed a new list of male and female names for the Atlantic and Western Pacific basins, while in order to maintain consistency it adapted the Eastern Pacific naming lists.

Greek Names
During the 1985 Pacific hurricane season, the Eastern Pacific Hurricane Center had to request additional names after they had exhausted the 21 names they had been given for the year and were subsequently given the names Xina, York and Zelda to use that season. Later in the 1980s, the decision was made to extend the list for the Eastern Pacific to 24 names on a permanent basis, while a contingency plan of using letters of the Greek Alphabet to name tropical cyclones was also introduced. Despite the seasonal list of names being exhausted during the 1992 Pacific hurricane season, the contingency plan of using the Greek Alphabet for names, did not have to be used until the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season breached its list of names. At the following session of the Hurricane Committee in March and April 2006, there was considerable discussion over the usage of the Greek Alphabet as a supplemental list names, with several views expressed about if a letter of the Greek Alphabet could be retired. Members of the committee noted that the usage of the Greek Alphabet had been responsible for a major political, economic and social impact, which it speculated would not have happened if a supplemental list of regular names had been used. As a result, it was unanimously decided by the hurricane committee, that the Greek Alphabet would continue to be used if the seasonal list of names was used up.

At the 2010 Interdepartmental Hurricane Conference, NOAA noted that various negative feedback had been received from the general public, media and emergency manager community, about the usage of the Greek Alphabet for naming tropical cyclones in 2005. As a result, it was recommended that the usage of the Greek alphabet when the seasonal naming list was exhausted, should be discontinued and replaced with a secondary naming list that used all of the conventions of the primary list. The conference accepted the recommendation and passed it on to the WMO's Hurricane Committee which rejected the proposal, as it felt that the usage of the Greek Alphabet was not expected to be frequent enough to warrant changing the existing naming procedures. In September 2020, after the seasonal list of names was exhausted, the NHC had to use its contingency plan again and name tropical cyclones using the Greek Alphabet. As the Greek letters were used, it was noted that there were issues with how some of the names were being translated into other languages and how they were pronounced as several of the names were very similar. It was also feared that there could be too much focus on the usage of the alphabet and not the impacts of a system, which it felt could distract from impact and safety messaging. As a result, a proposal was made at the following session of the Hurricane Committee to stop using the Greek Alphabet when the seasonal list of names for either the Eastern Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean was exhausted in a given season. The committee overwhelmingly voted in favour of the proposal, before it devised and approved a supplemental list of names for both basins, that would be used when the primary list of names for a season was exhausted.

Renaming
At the 22nd hurricane committee in 2000 it was decided that any tropical cyclone that moved from the Atlantic to the Eastern Pacific basin and vice versa would no longer be renamed, provided it remained a tropical cyclone (depression, storm, or hurricane) for its entire crossing of the land mass between the basins. In that case, the National Hurricane Center would be continuously issuing advisories on a regular 6-hour interval without interruption. According to a spokesman for the NHC, "If there is a gap in the advisories, it gets a new name" instead.