tropical storm wilma is the 21st named storm of the 2005 hurricane season, which ties the record. the problem is, hurricane season is far from over. it doesn't end until november 30th.
tropical storms and hurricanes are named alphabetically. the first one identified each year has a name beginning with an A, the second a B, etc. we went from K (katrina) to W (wilma) in roughly the same amount of time as there is between today and the end of the season.
so it looks fairly likely that we will get more than 26 storms this year. so what will we call the 27th storm? does the alphabet loop back around to A? do we go with AA (e.g. "tropical depression aardvark")? do we go with numbers ("hurricane 1neeta")? or do we start going through new alphabet entirely ("hurricane احمد")? inquiring minds wanna know!
has anyone thought through these critical questions? anyone at all? we probably don't have all that much time, you know. at the rate things are going, we can easily get to hurricane zelda in the next week and a half. shouldn't someone be jumping into action on this? what exactly do we pay those national weather service guys to do anyway?
UPDATE: hydromuse* gave me a link. wilma is the last named storm of the season. the next one will be called "Alpha." i still like my ideas better
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*albert also mentioned the alpha name in his comment, but hydro gets the full honors because he gave me a link
