Cyclone names for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season are out: Did you make the list?

Roberto Villalpando, Austin American-Statesman
·3 min read
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With the Atlantic hurricane season beginning on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center’s official list of Atlantic tropical cyclone names for 2022 is out. Did your name make the cut this year?

Actually, there’s not much mystery to the list because the names are used in rotation and recycled every six years. For instance, many of the names in 2022 will be used again in 2028.

But sometimes the named storms gain enough notoriety for their death and damage that the names are “retired” from the list — sort of the meteorological version of retiring the jersey number of a star athlete.

Three cyclone names — Laura, Eta and Iota — were retired in 2020, and Ida was retired last year.

Here's a hint for the first hurricane name this year: Agatha could lead to Alex.

As of Tuesday afternoon, a large system of low atmospheric pressure — often a precursor to tropical storms — is expected to develop near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula over the next few days, according to the National Hurricane Center.

More: Hurricane Agatha makes landfall in southern Mexico; storm could redevelop in Atlantic

The system is partially related to the remnants of Hurricane Agatha, the first storm of the Pacific hurricane season, that made landfall in southern Mexico on Monday, forecasters said.

"Despite strong upper-level winds over the area, this system is likely to become a tropical depression while it moves northeastward over the northwestern Caribbean Sea and southeastern Gulf of Mexico late Thursday or Friday," the hurricane center said in a bulletin Tuesday. Forecasters put the chances of a cyclone forming over the next five days at 70%. If a cyclone does form, it will likely be the first in the Atlantic this year and earn the moniker Alex.

How are hurricane names chosen?

The names of Atlantic tropical storms are maintained and updated through a strict procedure by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization.

Here are a few key things to know about the naming process:

• Hurricane names cover only 21 letters of the alphabet because of how hard it is to find a name that starts with Q, U, X, Y and Z (and can translate into local languages) for each of the six rotating lists.

• English, French and Spanish names are used in balance on the list to reflect the geographical coverage of Atlantic and Caribbean storms.

• According to the World Meteorological Organization, "the list is also gender-balanced and respectful of societal sensitivities."

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season produced 30 named storms and exhausted that year's list of human names and supplemental list of Greek letters.

But last year, the World Meteorological Organization ditched the use of Greek letters in favor of adding an evergreen backup list of human names for tropical cyclones. According to the organization, members decided to abandon the Greek alphabet "because it creates a distraction from the communication of hazard and storm warnings and is potentially confusing."

What names were chosen for the 2022 hurricane season?

So when the Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1, the sequence of names for 2022 will be: Alex, Colin, Bonnie, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Ian, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Martin, Nicole, Owen, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tobias, Virginie and Walter.

Then, once those names are exhausted, meteorologists will begin pulling from the supplemental list of names in alphabetical order.

With more modern monikers in this group, the supplemental list sounds a lot like the roll call for an American kindergarten class: Adria, Braylen, Caridad, Deshawn, Emery, Foster, Gemma, Heath, Isla, Jacobus, Kenzie, Lucio, Makayla, Nolan, Orlanda, Pax, Ronin, Sophie, Tayshaun, Viviana and Will.

If your name didn't make the cut this year, there's always 2023. The names for the 2023 season are: Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harold, Idalia, Jose, Katia, Lee, Margot, Nigel, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince and Whitney.

A low-pressure system was developing Tuesday near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, which could potentially become the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. Texas is in the upper left corner of the satellite image.
A low-pressure system was developing Tuesday near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, which could potentially become the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. Texas is in the upper left corner of the satellite image.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Alex, Gaston, Sophie make 2022 hurricane season cyclone names list