Most active hurricane season ever?

[Michael Auker]

Its starting to look like we'll get to at least Alpha, with potentially two tropical storms forming over the next day or two. Models also pretty gung-ho on development near the Bahamas in the next couple of days. I wonder what the continued cooling SST off the S. American coast portends for the rest of the season?

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I'm still not convinced. I mean, there have been several very promising looking waves in the past month that haven't developed and eventually dissipated. It does look like the activity sw of the Cape Verde chain will be TD19 (I think 19) by tomorrow this time. The activity in nw Caribbean has struggled the past few days, with intermittent pulses of convection following typical diurnal/nocturnal trends. It still has a bit of time, but it looks like there's some northerly shear over the area. We'll see.

 

[PaulChambers]

I know that after all the assigned names are used that they go into the Greek alphabet. My question is do they retire an Greek alphabet name like they do the names in the assigned names list and, if so, what do they do in the future if they have to go into the Greek alphabet?? For example, if they would retire "Alpha", do they start with Beta in the future, just skipping Alpha???

 

[Jim Tang]

I know that after all the assigned names are used that they go into the Greek alphabet. My question is do they retire an Greek alphabet name like they do the names in the assigned names list and, if so, what do they do in the future if they have to go into the Greek alphabet?? For example, if they would retire "Alpha", do they start with Beta in the future, just skipping Alpha???

I don't think so. The Greek alphabet works sorta like TD numbers or the phonetic alphabet (back in the 1950's), they don't get retired.

Example: TD 15 kills thousands when it stalls over Hispaniola. If it so happens there's a TD 15 the next year, they won't skip that number. Likewise, suppose Beta is a really bad storm, but still, Beta will be used again in the future should it warrant.