Tropical Storm ONE is ready to deliver 10-20 inches of rain to western Cuba.

It probably will become Tropical Storm Alberto later today or tomorrow.

Anyone want to guess how many named storms we’ll have this year after last year’s record 27?

Today marks the end of the 2005 hurricane season. Starting tomorrow any storms will go unnamed until the 2006 storm season starts June 1st.

We’ve had a record 26 named storms. Before this year I had no idea what happened when we ran through the list of 21 Atlantic storm names — we’d never done it before.

As we all know now, after the people names, storms are named by letters of the Greek alphabet. Tropical Storm Epsilon is currently 1045 KM east-southeast of Bermuda with 70 mph winds.

It’s a good thing the season is ending. No one I’ve talked with knew off Greek alphabet deeper than Epsilon… until, of course, we get to Omega.

But, thanks to Patti, I’m ready for next season. Here’s the alphabet:

The National Weather Service says that they started naming hurricanes because human names were easier to understand and track than the old latitude/longitude method of identifying storms. I guess they don’t expect much naming confusion from December 1 through May 31.

For weather geeks, there’s more on storm names.

There’s something disquieting in the thought that God/Mother Nature/The Cosmic Muffin is merely preparing for a formal release of a real hurricane season. I don’t think that beta testing is really necessary — tropical storm formation and devastation seem to be perfected.

A true relation of my weather-worried grandmother, I am still scarfing up information on hurricanes.  I find the carnival-like, “Oh Boy, it’s going to be a disaster!” commentary on television distasteful.  But, I also find myself surfing for details.

Some favorite factiods:

The list of hurricane names is posted at on a government NASA page. If the Internet can be believed, there are six lists of names, each used for a complete hurricane season. No “Q”, “U”, “X”, “Y” and “Z” names appear.

Terrapin Associates has a hurricane archive which allows you to search by storm name or location back into the 1800’s!  That’s where I found my grandmother’s nemesis, Hurricane Donna.  The site also provides a JavaScript track of each storm — click to see how
Hurricane Donna visited southeastern Massachusetts in 1960.

Maybe Grandmother would have liked the Internet after all.

If only my grandmother were still alive! She’d been in nervous-weather heaven this hurricane season.

Although she lived just south of Boston in not exactly prime hurricane territory, she tracked every storm and was sure that each was going to make straight for Massachusetts and do us in. At the start of the hurricane season, she’d mail into WBZ to get weatherman Don Kent’s special hurricane tracking map. She’d mark every tropical depression/storm/hurricane’s position using the latitude and longitude thoughtfully broadcast by Mr. Kent and his cohorts.

Sure, it might look like a storm was going to peter out over the South Carolina coast and yet again spare our town. But, my grandmother knew that you couldn’t be too cautious, and she’d track the storms until they were reduced to scattered showers.

I remember that along one side of the map, there was the list of storm names queued up for the year: Alma, Buellah, Charlotte, etc. They were all girl names when I was growing up and learning my grandmother’s obsession with the weather and worry.

Grandmother would just be uncontrollable this year.  We’ve gone through our entire 2005 named allotment of Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Dennis, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katrina, Lee, Maria Nate, Ophelia Phillipe, Rita, Stan,Tammy, Vince, and Wilma.

Now the season’s 25th tropical depression is expected to strengthen into a tropical storm.  That’s the tipping point where it gets its own name. 

Poor depression #25. We’re out of names!  Grandmother would be giddy to learn that the rule book covers this situation.  When we run out of people names, we dip into the Greek alphabet and start naming storms after the letters there.

So, I’m prepared to welcome to little Alpha when she’s born.  It looks like she’ll miss the prime hurricane-bait land like otterpop58‘s home. (Apparently Wilma called dibs on Florida first.)

Grandmother’s tracking map would be a message of pencil smudges with the storm locations this year.  Let’s hope we give the pencils — and people of the Southeast — a rest and not venture any further toward hurricane Omega.