ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season has shattered so many records, it’s hard to keep track of them all.
An almost certain upcoming record will be tying the historic 2005 hurricane season for running out of names for tropical cyclones.
Wilfred is the last name on this year's list. The year 2005 also ran out of names, but 2020 has gone through them faster than ever seen before. Almost every letter of the alphabet was recorded faster in 2020 than any year before. The image below shows that 2020 now infamously owns the record for the earliest named storm of nearly every letter.
But as the infomercial says, “But wait, there’s more!” While only the 2005 hurricane season has ever run out of names, it’s a near certainty that 2020 will as well. With two-and-a-half months to go in the hurricane season, we will likely surpass the historic 2005 season with the most named storms in our written history.
In 2005, the National Hurricane Center ran out of names -- and for the first time. On Oct. 22, 2005, they had to use the Greek alphabet for the first time ever to name the record-breaking Tropical Storm Alpha.
The other Greek alphabet names used that year were Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta.
2020 will almost certainly need to use the Greek alphabet before then, possibly even in September.
If eight more storms are named by the end of the 2020 hurricane season, yet another record will fall: The most named storms in Atlantic hurricane history.
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