2008 Atlantic Storm Names

2008 - Is this the year?

Below is the list of names for the 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season. You'll notice that there are 21 names on this list. Only once in the 57-year history of naming Atlantic storms has this list of 21 names been exhausted and that was during the 2005 Hurricane Season, in which 28 storms were named. How did they name the additional 7 storms? You might recall that the National Hurricane Center had to rely on its policy of using names from the Greek alphabet. As a result, the final storm of the 2005 Hurricane season was Tropical Storm Zeta, which formed in late December, nearly a month after the official end of the hurricane season.

History

Meteorologists have been naming storms in the Atlantic basic since 1953 when the National Weather Service generated its first list of storm names, which actually only contained female names. In 1979 the system was revised and a new list was generated that contained both men's and women's names and alternated between each. Currently, there are six different lists of names which are managed by the World Meteorological Organization. Each year the list is rotated so that the names of the storms are different from the previous six years. When a storm causes serious loss of life and property that name is retired out of respect for those affected and to make it easier to document the event properly.

• ARTHUR
• BERTHA
• CRISTOBAL
• DOLLY
• EDOUARD
• FAY
• GUSTAV
• HANNA
• IKE
• JOSEPHINE
• KYLE
• LAURA
• MARCO
• NANA
• OMAR
• PALOMA
• RENE
• SALLY
• TEDDY
• VICKY
• WILFRED