How Do Atlantic Hurricanes Get Named?
The 2024 Atlantic Tropical Storm Naming List
For ease of communication with the public, each tropical storm is alotted a distinctive, instantly recognisable name. The storm retains this name even when it develops into a fully fledged hurricane.
As each Atlantic tropical storm forms in 2024, it is alotted the next available name from the following list:
| 2024 List | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. Alberto | 11. Kirk | |
| 2. Beryl | 12. Leslie | |
| 3. Chris | 13. Milton | |
| 4. Debby | 14. Nadine | |
| 5. Ernesto | 15. Oscar | |
| 6. Francine | 16. Patty | |
| 7. Gordon | 17. Rafael | |
| 8. Helene | 18. Sara | |
| 9. Isaac | 19. Tony | |
| 10. Joyce | 20. Valerie | |
| 21. William |
Should there be more than 21 Atlantic tropical storms in the 2024 season, additional names will be drawn from a reserve list.
The World Meteorological Organization’s Hurricane Committee maintains six different lists of names, which are used in rotation and thus repeat every six years. Accordingly, the 2024 list was last used in 2018.1 To reflect the geographical spread of Atlantic and Caribbean storms, the names are drawn in a balanced manner from English, French, and Spanish. Furthermore, the names alternate by gender, and are selected to be respectful of societal sensitivities.
According to data supplied by NOAA National Hurricane Center, each season between 1991 and 2020 produced 14 named tropical storms on average. Of the tropical storms, on average 7 developed into hurricanes (tropical cyclones with sustained winds of at least 64 knots).
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Names of particularly powerful and destructive hurricanes are retired. Hence Florence and Michael, which were powerful and destructive in 2018, are replaced by Francine and Milton in the 2024 list. ↩︎