They've Run Out of Names

Not that it exactly comes as a surprise at this point, but the twenty-second named storm of the 2005 hurricane season has formed near Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The National Hurricane Center sets aside twenty-one names for storms before the season, so for the first time we've used them all up and had to go for more. We last saw twenty-one storms in 1933. The new storm is Tropical Storm Alpha, as the National Hurricane Center falls back on Greek letters. You may wonder why we've run out of names after only twenty-one--they skip the letters q, u, x, y, and z.

At this point they're predicting that Alpha won't make it up to hurricane strength and will remain in the Atlantic, moving over Haiti and the Dominican Republic before going north/northeast and passing near Bermuda. We can't forget that Wilma remains a problem, though, as it looks now to be crossing the south Florida peninsula starting on Monday. And the hurricane season isn't over yet. It officially lasts until November 30, so we've got more than a month still to go.