The 28th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season formed in the Caribbean Saturday tying 2005 for most named storms in a single season. Eta also breaks the record for most names ever used by the National Hurricane Center. The only other time the Greek Alphabet was needed was the 2005 season. During the National Hurricane Center’s post season analysis of the 2005 season, a storm was found to have been missed, but was worthy of a name. Because of this, there is an unnamed 28th storm in the 2005 season.

When a hurricane season runs out of names in a particularly active season, the letters of the Greek Alphabet are used. Since the Greek Alphabet is the backup to the list of names every season, there could be a problem if a Greek Alphabet storm is worthy for retirement. Do Greek Alphabet Storms get retired? In 2006, following the first time the Greek Alphabet was required to complete a hurricane season, the WMO decided that it “wasn’t practical” to retire a Greek letter if it met the criteria for retirement because the use of the Greek Alphabet doesn’t occur frequently enough. If a Greek Alphabet storm is worthy for retirement, however the Greek letter would be included with the list of retired names with the year of occurrence, but that letter in the Greek Alphabet would still be used in the future.

There are currently two named storms (Paulette and Rene) in the Atlantic, with another storm likely developing by the end of the week or weekend. The percentage is for the chance it has to develop into a tropical system, not whether it will impact land. The Atlantic is currently being influenced by two areas of high pressure, one in the Eastern Atlantic, the other near the U.S.A trough of low pressure is in the middle helping to create the two split areas of high pressure. Paulette will be caught between the two high pressure systems and, therefore, will be moving slowly. Next week, there is a chance that we could have four named systems active at the same time in the Atlantic.