In a season of Atlantic hurricanes, will one of these forces of nature get your name?
Hurricane season in the Atlantic starts on Sunday, May 1, and while Michigan isn't at much risk, there's reason to keep an eye out for the storms, especially if you are a force of nature and your name is Andrea, Jerry, or Tanya, if we get that far in the alphabet.
You just might find your name in an amusing headline that highlights how unwelcome you are or that highlights your destructive power.
A list of names for storms is created by the World Meteorological Organization, and the storms are named in alphabetical order, starting with Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dexter, Erin, Fernand, Gabrielle, Humberto, Imelda and Jerry.
After Jerry, the list includes Karen, Lorenzo, Melissa, Nestor, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastien, Tanya, Van and ends with Wendy. No names on the list start with a Q, U, X, Y or Z, mostly because those names are rarer.
And there usually aren't enough hurricanes to need that many names.
But last week, the National Weather Service predicted above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin during the season, which lasts until Nov. 30. It is forecasting a range of 13 to 19 total named storms. If correct, Tanya, might — just might — make the cut.
In recent years, hurricanes have become increasingly destructive and common, climate scientists have said. And you might not think that matters, living in the Midwest, unless you own a winter condo or time-share in Florida.
"The majority of the time, if a storm makes it up here, we get just the remnants — heavy rain," Jaclyn Anderson, a weather service meteorologist in White Lake Township, said. "The rain can cause some flooding."
Storms can affect an array of things, from gas prices to insurance premiums.
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What's more, data from the group that names the hurricanes released a report recently that suggests in a couple of years, the Earth could cross what some conclude is an irreversible tipping point in rising temperature.
The dangers of this apocalyptic warming include melting ice caps and glaciers, the collapse of coral reefs and more intense hurricanes that are threatening coastal cities and Michiganders' winter getaways.
Last year, one study suggested two hurricanes — Beryl and Milton — would not have been as bad without this change. Remnants of both storms raced toward Michigan, triggering warnings for Detroiters in flood-prone areas.
As for the storm names, according to the National Hurricane Center, for a few hundred years leading up to the 1800s, hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the saint's day when they occurred.
In the 1950s, the United States tried naming storms using a phonetic alphabet, Able, Baker, Charlie and so on. But that got confusing when an international phonetic alphabet was introduced and meteorologists started naming storms after women.
In the late '70s, men's names were also added.
Now, the lists change every year in a six-year rotation. The names for the worst storms — the ones that wreak the most havoc — are retired. Dexter is new on this year's list, replacing Dorian. You can check the lists for 2026, 2027, and 2028.
In 2029, the list from 2023 gets recycled, minus any retired names.
Anderson, however, has the blessing — or perhaps curse — of having a somewhat unusually spelled first name, Jaclyn, which, as a result, she said probably will never end up on one of the hurricane name lists.
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Forecaster hurricane names and predictions. Will we get to Tanya?
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