Hurricane Idalia

[BoSoxGal]

According to the baby names resources, Idalia is of Greek origin, associated with Aphrodite, and means ‘behold the sun.’

Who picks the hurricane names, anyway?

I am praying, in the fashion that I do, for big bend Floridians. I hope they heed the call to evacuate.

[Big RR]

As I understand it, the World Meteorological Association has six lists of names that are rotated every year, so all 6 are used every 6 year. Not sure what happens when the alphabet is run through--I think they used to use greek letters, but now names are assigned, so there are names after Z is passed, probably from a supplemental list. some names are retired as well for particularly destructive hurricanes and new ones are added. Indeed, as I recall, they all used to get women's names until around the 80s where both men and women names began to be alternated.

[Econoline]

I'm surprised that the Republicans haven't (yet) started investigating/prosecuting Hillary for the damage she did in California.

[datsunaholic]

The World Meteorological Association created the rotating lists of names currently used in the North Atlantic basin. The current 6 lists of 21 names each started in 1979, with destructive names being retired and replaced as needed. For example, this years (2023) list was first used in 1981.

The list used in 1981:
Arlene
Bret
Cindy
Dennis
Emily
Floyd
Gert
Harvey
Irene
Jose
Katrina
Lenny
Maria
Nate
Ophelia
Philippe
Rita
Stan
Tammy
Vince
Wilma

Q, U, X, Y and Z are not used in any of the lists for the North Atlantic.

In fact that list was used unchanged in 1987, 1993, and 1999 when 2 names were retired: Floyd was replaced with Franklin, and Lenny was replaced with Lee in the 2005 list.

The current 2023 list:

Arlene
Bret
Cindy
Don
Emily
Franklin
Gert
Harold
Idalia
Jose
Katia
Lee
Margot
Nigel
Ophelia
Philippe
Rina
Sean
Tammy
Vince
Whitney

Note that 10 of the 21 names are the same as the 1981 list- while there have been hurricanes and/or tropical storms that have used the names, they weren't destructive enough to warrant retiring the names from the list. 12 names have been retired from the list- 11 original and one replacement.

For this list, the names that were retired are: Floyd and Lenny after the 1999 season; Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan, and Wilma after the 2005 season; Irene after the 2011 season, and Harvey, Maria, and Nate after the 2017 season (along with Irma which had replaced Irene). So Idalia is the 3rd "I" name used in this particular list. And it may (like Irma) only last one use since it's hitting Tampa as a major (cat 3) Hurricane.

Of note, in all 6 lists, only the letter "V" has never had a name retired. The letter "I" is the most commonly retired, with 11 names since the current lists began in 1979 and 2 prior to that. "F" is the next most common.

When all the names are exhausted for a year (more than 21 named storms) the old practice was to go to Greek letters. Those weren't supposed to be retired but with 2 very destructive greek-lettered storms in 2020 (Eta and Iota) the WMO decided to drop the Greek letters and instead now has a "supplemental" 7th list to be used beginning with the 22nd storm:

Adria
Braylen
Caridad
Deshawn
Emery
Foster
Gemma
Heath
Isla
Jacobus
Kenzie
Lucio
Makayla
Nolan
Orlanda
Pax
Ronin
Sophie
Tayshaun
Viviana
Will

The supplemental list took effect for the 2021 season but hasn't been used yet.

[BoSoxGal]

Somebody at the World Meteorological Organization had a sense of humor to include ‘behold the sun’ as a hurricane name.

Idalia will be making landfall as a category 4 with sustained winds of 156mph. I hope the end is quick for those who didn’t evacuate and won’t survive 16’ of storm surge.

Time for Floridians to move en masse to Nebraska, I think.

Is anyone familiar with ‘Hiroshimas per second’? For all the reading on climate science that I do, I somehow only just learned this measurement for heat absorption by earth.

Apparently in recent years the ocean has been absorbing heat equivalent to 5 Hiroshima explosions per second, every second of every day. Rapid intensification of hurricanes is greatly exacerbated by the warming oceans.

What a ride we humans have had.

[BoSoxGal]

The link to this article was shared on another forum where we discussed hurricane Idalia. I thought some folks here might find it interesting - it details a worst case scenario report on a category 5 hurricane hitting Tampa Bay.

https://www.tampabay.com/hurricane/2020 ... -scenario/