<p>The traditional list of hurricane names for the year goes from A to W, and, in the very rare occurrence that the W storm has formed and there is another tropical storm out there, then the Greek letter names (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. to Omega) are used (e.g., <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Atlantic_hurricane_season" rel="nofollow noreferrer">2005 Atlantic hurricane season</a>). Considering the activity so far (September 2020) of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Atlantic_hurricane_season" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Atlantic hurricane season</a>, and that we still have two months of season (i.e., <a href="https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/811/why-is-the-atlantic-hurricane-season-defined-as-being-between-june-1-and-novembe">until November 30</a>), what is the next naming list coming from (if there even is one)?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-19T15:37:47.813Z
@gansub, there are potentially another 16 hurricanes/tropical storms after what that question asks. Funny that the two were asked at about the same time
arkaia
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-19T20:22:09.730Z
A not-qualified chemist's idea, facing a lager of gnumeric's spreadsheets: here Latin column headers run A--Z, them start by AA, AB, AC, AD ...   Cambridge Crystallographic Centre's [CSD database](https://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/) uses a six (Latin) character system potentially hosting 6^26 stem entries, too.  Thus _if_ applied to Greek, the available space of 24 slots would be extended by additional 2^24 which hopefully were much more than enough to cover many storms daily.
Buttonwood
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-21T07:35:38.027Z
@Buttonwood The point of this system is that the storms are easily identified by the public, making risk-related communication easier for authorities. Not sure if it would still be the case with storms named "ERGDPH" or "$\alpha\mu\zeta\epsilon\alpha\gamma$"...
Jean-Marie Prival
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-21T17:01:40.307Z
@Jean-MariePrival The detail  _to the public_ is important.  I'm still more familiar with system with 21 (Northern Atlantic) / 24 (Northern Pacific) latin-character name lists (e.g., Irene, Katrina in 2005) and _speculate(d)_ 21 Latin-character based names + 24 Greek ones hopefully were enough. It not like this old 1979 publication where chemists already defined all the names of elements up to #900, while (currently) only 118 are described with experimental evidence (open access, https://doi.org/10.1351/pac197951020381).
Buttonwood
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-24T02:04:43.567Z
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/944/
Mark
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-10-08T08:22:24.020Z
NHC got to the Greek list on Sept 18th. That's about a week past the climatological peak, so the season should be over halfway done. In the remaining less-than-half a season, we'd need to have 14% more than the RECORD pace we set in the first half+ of the season (24 Greek names vs 21 regular). To me it seems like asking "what would the NBA do if a game had so many overtimes\such incredible scoring that they reached the 1000s of points, how would they keep score?" They'd find a way. But such incredibly unlikely potentialities likely aren't worth the time of planning for\considering!
JeopardyTempest
<meteorology><tropical-cyclone><storms><atlantic>
What will happen if the Greek letter names were exhausted for naming tropical storms?
arkaia
# What will happen if the Greek letter names were exhausted for naming tropical storms?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-09-19)

The traditional list of hurricane names for the year goes from A to W, and, in the very rare occurrence that the W storm has formed and there is another tropical storm out there, then the Greek letter names (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. to Omega) are used (e.g., [2005 Atlantic hurricane season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Atlantic_hurricane_season)). Considering the activity so far (September 2020) of the [Atlantic hurricane season](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Atlantic_hurricane_season), and that we still have two months of season (i.e., [until November 30](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/811/why-is-the-atlantic-hurricane-season-defined-as-being-between-june-1-and-novembe)), what is the next naming list coming from (if there even is one)?

**Tags:** meteorology, tropical-cyclone, storms, atlantic

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: @gansub, there are potentially another 16 hurricanes/tropical storms after what that question asks. Funny that the two were asked at about the same time  
> **username_1**: A not-qualified chemist's idea, facing a lager of gnumeric's spreadsheets: here Latin column headers run A--Z, them start by AA, AB, AC, AD ...   Cambridge Crystallographic Centre's [CSD database](https://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/) uses a six (Latin) character system potentially hosting 6^26 stem entries, too.  Thus _if_ applied to Greek, the available space of 24 slots would be extended by additional 2^24 which hopefully were much more than enough to cover many storms daily.  
> **username_2**: @username_1 The point of this system is that the storms are easily identified by the public, making risk-related communication easier for authorities. Not sure if it would still be the case with storms named "ERGDPH" or "$\alpha\mu\zeta\epsilon\alpha\gamma$"...  
> **username_1**: @username_2 The detail  _to the public_ is important.  I'm still more familiar with system with 21 (Northern Atlantic) / 24 (Northern Pacific) latin-character name lists (e.g., Irene, Katrina in 2005) and _speculate(d)_ 21 Latin-character based names + 24 Greek ones hopefully were enough. It not like this old 1979 publication where chemists already defined all the names of elements up to #900, while (currently) only 118 are described with experimental evidence (open access, https://doi.org/10.1351/pac197951020381).  
> **username_3**: Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/944/  
> **username_4**: NHC got to the Greek list on Sept 18th. That's about a week past the climatological peak, so the season should be over halfway done. In the remaining less-than-half a season, we'd need to have 14% more than the RECORD pace we set in the first half+ of the season (24 Greek names vs 21 regular). To me it seems like asking "what would the NBA do if a game had so many overtimes\such incredible scoring that they reached the 1000s of points, how would they keep score?" They'd find a way. But such incredibly unlikely potentialities likely aren't worth the time of planning for\considering!  

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## 0 answers

