The 2009 Atlantic hurricane season officially begins today, so I figured I would talk a little about the storm naming process.

The World Meteorological Organization maintains and updates six lists of tropical cyclone names for the Atlantic basin, one list per year with each list repeated once every six years. Before 1953 latitude and longitude numbers were used to refer to storms, however that proved to be a little confusing. That's why in 1953 they started using names to refer to the storms. The lists initially contained only female names, but since 1979 male names were added and now each list alternates between male and female.

Devastating storms that cause major damage and/or are very costly have their names removed from the list for sensitivity reasons. Some of those storms include Andrew 1992, Katrina 2005 and even Ike from 2008. The WMO then replaces the name with a new one.

This year's forecast is for an near average storm season which would mean around 10 named storms.

Here is this years list.

2009

Ana
Bill
Claudette
Danny
Erika
Fred
Grace
Henri
Ida
Joaquin
Kate
Larry
Mindy
Nicholas
Odette
Peter
Rose
Sam
Teresa
Victor
Wanda