We’re less than 100 days from the start of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season and here are the 21 names on the list using almost every letter of the alphabet.
The Atlantic hurricane season storm names in 2023 are: Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harold, Idalia, Jose, Katia, Lee, Margot, Nigel, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince, Whitney. New storm name, due to retired name.
If we have an active season and run through the entire list of names, a supplemental name list will be used.
This year’s primary list of names might look familiar to the one from 2017. That’s because these name lists rotate every six years – a practice which began in 1979 – unless a particular storm is so destructive and/or deadly that the World Meteorological Organization votes to retire that name from future use, such as Harvey, Katrina, Michael or Sandy.
Four storms from 2017 do not appear on the 2023 list because they were retired: Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate.
The Atlantic hurricane season officially begins on June 1 and ends on Nov. 30 every year.
The National Hurricane Center chose this six-month period because it accounts for 97% of all Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes, according to NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division.
That means only 3% of Atlantic tropical cyclones occur outside those hurricane season dates, with the majority of out-of-season activity occurring in May or December. However, there has been either an Atlantic tropical storm or hurricane every month of the year.
How to prepare for hurricane season
With the Atlantic hurricane season starting on June 1, now is the perfect time to prepare you and your family.
Preparing for a hurricane or tropical storm before the season begins will ensure you have plenty of time to gather supplies and stock up on other resources before a storm sets its sights on your location.
