The Atlantic hurricane season will remove the names Dorian, Laura, Eta and Iota from the list to name tropical storms starting this year due to the death and destruction those cyclones caused in 2019 and 2020, and the use of the Greek alphabet will stop .
The National Office for Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA) and the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami on Wednesday reiterated the decision of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Hurricane Committee that tries to leave behind and avoid the names of hurricanes deadly confusion with the Greek alphabet, used when the 21 names on the annual list were exhausted.
The WMO therefore decided to drop the names during a virtual meeting where the “unprecedented hurricane season that took place in the Atlantic in 2020” was discussed.
The confusion of the Greek alphabet
Since the annual list of 21 names has been exhausted twice in the past 15 years, and will likely happen again, the Hurricane Committee agreed to develop an additional list that would be used in place of the Greek alphabet.
According to the analysts collected, the 2020 season showed that there were a number of shortcomings in the use of the Greek alphabet, including “too much emphasis” on the names and not the actual impact of the storms.
“This could detract from the necessary impact and safety messages,” they noted.
On the other hand, the group of experts admitted, there is confusion with some names of the Greek alphabet when translated into other languages used in each region.
“The pronunciation of different Greek letters (Zeta, Eta, Theta) are similar and occur one after the other,” they said in a statement.
“The consequences of Eta and Iota were so severe that the hurricane committee formally withdrawn them. There was no formal plan to withdraw the Greek names, and future use of these names would be inappropriate,” explains WMO.
Since 1953, when the current storm naming system came into use, 93 names have been removed from the lists used for the Atlantic basin.
The US National Hurricane Center has published the list of 21 names for 2021, in alphabetical order: Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Elsa, Fred, Grace, Henri, Ida, Julian, Kate, Larry, Mindy, Nicholas, Odette, Peter , Rose, Sam, Teresa, Victor and Wanda.
The Scourge of the Caribbean
“Developing countries and small islands in the Caribbean and Central America are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of tropical cyclones, which can devastate years of socio-economic development within hours,” President Evan Thompson said during the discussion. From WMO Regional Association IV, including North America, Central America and the Caribbean.
Thompson recalled that this situation reoccurred in 2020, with tragic consequences. “
Dorian (2019) reached Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale and caused catastrophic damage mainly in the Abaco Islands and eastern Grand Bahama. His name will be replaced by Dexter in the list of names for 2025, the Geneva-based WMO announced in a statement.
Laura (2020) was a powerful Category 4 hurricane that, according to the organization, caused 47 direct deaths in the United States and Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and left more than $ 19,000 million in damage.
Likewise, in November 2020, Hurricanes Eta and Iota made landfall in the same area of the Nicaraguan coast, south of Puerto Cabezas, less than two weeks apart. They caused at least 272 deaths and damages in excess of $ 9 billion in losses.