Alpha - Beta - Gamma - Delta - Epsilon - Zeta...

[Cuivienen]

Tropical Storm Beta has formed off the coast of Nicaragua. It's moving slowly and is forecast to strengthen to a Category 2-3 hurricane before making landfall on Nicaragua.

In case you don't know, that's really bad news for Nicaragua. Slow-moving storms in Central America are almost always very deadly. Mitch, for example, was only Cat 2 at landfall (though Cat 5 at one point) yet is the modern record for deadliest hurricane, short of only the Great Hurricane of 1780.

 

[Nate128]

Will it ever end?

 

[cgannon64]

Why do they stop with the letter W, anyway?

 

[Nate128]

They don't.

 

[cgannon64]

Wasn't the last named hurricane named Wilma?

 

[Nate128]

My mistake. They do stop at W. I guess because theres a very limited amount of X,Y,Z names

 

[Elrohir]

They're sexist, they could have named this one Xena! Their afraid of the unstoppable force that is a truly empowered women!

Seriously, Xena, Yeti, Yogi, Zophar, there are plenty of X-y-Z names.

 

[WillJ]

Yeah, but hurricane names are along the names of Betty, William, Geroge, Andrew, Wilma... Somehow Xena, Yeti, Yogi, and Zophar don't fit.

Edit: But hey, if we're going to call them sexist, we could call them racist too. Where's Hurricane Shoshana, or Hurricane Mohammad?

 

[Elrohir]

Why not? They shouldn't discriminate based upon race, species, or time period! (Zophar was one of Job's "comfortors", a couple thousand years ago)

No only are they sexist pigs, but they're racists, xenophobes, and chronophobes too! (Yes, I just made chronophobes up, what are you going to do about it? )

 

[FriendlyFire]

Yeah, but hurricane names are along the names of Betty, William, Geroge, Andrew, Wilma... Somehow Xena, Yeti, Yogi, and Zophar don't fit.

Edit: But hey, if we're going to call them sexist, we could call them racist too. Where's Hurricane Shoshana, or Hurricane Mohammad?

yeah wheres Hurrican Bush ? lololol

 

[Cuivienen]

Why do they stop with the letter W, anyway?

Two reasons:

#1: Until this year, 1933 had had the most tropical storms - 21.
#2: There just aren't enough names for there to be Q, U, X, Y and Z names.


All hurricane names are in English, Spanish and French because all countries affected by Atlantic hurricanes speak English, Spanish or French (Haiti). I suppose you could make an argument for Dutch (Netherlands Antilles), but they are really too far south to ever get hit by anything significant.

 

[Babbler]

Yeah, but hurricane names are along the names of Betty, William, Geroge, Andrew, Wilma... Somehow Xena, Yeti, Yogi, and Zophar don't fit.

Edit: But hey, if we're going to call them sexist, we could call them racist too. Where's Hurricane Shoshana, or Hurricane Mohammad?

A "Hurricane Mohammad", with its religious significance would be as bad as a Hurricane Adolf or a Hurricane Israel, both of which have been removed from the list.

 

[Nate128]

Minorities want to have "their" names added to the list?

What's the point in that? People want to have very deadly and damaging natural disasters named after them?

 

[Wolfe Tone]

People want to have very deadly and damaging natural disasters named after them?

I know I would

 

[Hitro]

Israel[...] been removed from the list.

Ahmadenejad runs that stupid Hurricane naming business?

 

[Truronian]

Maybe next we will have Hurricane Aleph, the Hurricane Beth...

 

[JohnRM]

yeah wheres Hurrican Bush ? lololol

Yeah, if you run out of the alphabetical letters and then the Greek Alphabet, then they should go to Presidents, in chronological order, back in time.

Hurricane Dubya
Hurricane Bubba
etc
etc

 

[Ansar]

Hurricane Xavier? Hurricane Zack? What about these names?.

I think we will have a Gamma before the season is done.

 

[JohnRM]

I think we will see a Delta, for that matter.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

Oh, man, I thought they were through to Omega already :c