The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) made a couple key decisions in their annual hurricane meeting.
The WMO decided to keep hurricane season starting at June 1, at least for now, though it may be moved to an earlier date in the future.
They also decided to end the use of Greek letters after the usual 21-name list runs out, as it did last year.
Essentially, this was done for three reasons:
-Too much focus on the names, not the impacts
-Very similar pronunciations of various names (Eta, Theta, etc)
-Once retired, there aren't more names to turn to
The third point is especially important, as the hurricane committee just retired two names from the Greek Alphabet.
They also retired Dorian from 2019, which stalled over the Bahamas with 185 mph winds. They couldn't retire it last year due to Covid.
Laura impacted the Gulf coast last year as well as the southeastern US.
Instead of Greek Letters, a supplementary list of names is in place for each year. When a name is retired from the usual list, they will use these names now.
The National Hurricane Center will be starting their tropical outlooks May 15.
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