With all the unknowns attached to the 2013 hurricane season, there’s at least one thing that’s down in black and white -- the 21 names chosen for this year’s tropical storms. The World Meteorological Organization selects the names and the lists are re-used every six years. But the first name on this year’s list - Andrea - might give some of South Florida's 1992 hurricane survivors a case of déjà vu.Before a tropical storm can earn a name it needs to do two things: display a rotating circulation pattern and reach a peak wind speed of at least 39 miles an hour. This year, the first storm to achieve that gets a female name.
If a hurricane is so deadly or destructive that the re-use of its name for a future storm would be insensitive, the name is permanently retired. That’s what happened to 1992’s Andrew. But National Hurricane Center director Richard Knabb says that rule doesn't apply for sound-alike names.
“We do tend to keep it to the shorter, easier to pronounce names. Some of them somewhat similar to past names", Knabb said. "But we will clearly articulate that this is a new system that doesn’t have the DNA of a past system in there.”
In the event that there are more than 21 named tropical cyclones in one season, any additional storms will take names from the Greek alphabet - Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and so on. The last time that happened was in 2005, when the most active storm season on record used up all the listed hurricane names, right down to "Wilma."