MANHATTAN — With hurricane and typhoon season cranking up fast and furiously, state climatologist Mary Knapp said coming with names for each storm isn’t as easy as you might think. The massive storms are called typhoons in the Pacific; except between the U.S. and Mexico and Hawaii, when they are referred to as hurricanes – a word of Caribbean origins, she said. When forecasters started tracking hurricanes, they assigned numbers to them but in the early 50s, they started calling storms by easier-to-remember female names. In 1979, forecasters began picking names from six rotating lists of both male and female English, Spanish and French names, she said. In the case of significant storms, their names are retired, she said. If there are more than 21 storms during the season, hurricane trackers start using letters of the old Greek alphabet to designate the storms, she said. During the severe hurricane season of 2005 there were 27 storms and some of them were serious enough that several names were retired – among them: Katrina.
Wednesday, Sept. 8. 1 p.m.
