How Hurricane Milton, Hurricane Helene Got Its Name: Breaking Down the Storm-Identifying Process

Hurricane season often sounds like a classroom roll call. 

When tropical storms and hurricanes make their way out of the Atlantic and onto land in June, each is assigned an actual name. Right now, as the southeastern region of the United States is still recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Florida residents are bracing for Hurricane Milton—currently a Category 4 storm—to make landfall Oct. 9.

So why do these devastating natural disasters get named as though they’re your grandma’s best friend? It helps meteorologists and the public keep track of the storms and make note of how far we are into hurricane season. The season's first storm begins with “A”—for 2024, that was Alberto—and will end with William, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Other names to come this season would be Nadine, Oscar, Patty, Rafael, Sara, Tony and Valerie. 

During World War II, forecasters in the Army and Navy started naming storms while tracking their movements in the Pacific Ocean, according to the National Hurricane Center. In 1953, the U.S. adopted the practice when the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provided a list of women’s names for Atlantic tropical storms.

More than 25 years later, in 1979, male names were introduced and, today, alternate with female ones. Now, the WMO has a strict procedure when it comes to picking names, including guidelines like character length and easy pronunciation. There are six lists in rotation that cover 21 letters but excludes Q, U, X, Y and Z since finding six easy names for each is difficult.

"It is important to note that tropical cyclones/hurricanes are named neither after any particular person, nor with any preference in alphabetical sequence," the WMO explained. "The tropical cyclone/hurricane names selected are those that are familiar to the people in each region."

But it’s also possible for the list of names to run out, which only happened twice in the past 15 years. For 2005 and 2020, which were record-breaking years in terms of hurricanes, the storms were named by the Greek alphabet. So, come 2021, a supplemental list to work through was developed that begins with Adria and ends with Will.

Some names have been retired and replaced because the storms had been “so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for obvious reasons of sensitivity,” the National Hurricane Center explained. Every spring, the WMO reconvenes to determine whether any storms should have their names retired.

For instance, Katrina, which killed more than 1,300 people and caused around $161 billion in damage, was replaced with Katia. In 2012, Sandy was replaced with Sara for the 2018 season. In 2017, Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate were replaced with Harold, Idalia, Margot and Nigel for the 2023 season. In 2021, Ida was replaced with Imani. 

The kind of damage often caused is unimaginable. “Unfortunately, it looks apocalyptic out there,” one resident told NBC News a year after the Ida in 2022. “It feels like you’re on the set of a movie and the zombies are coming out. It’s really disheartening.”

Since the storm slammed the region, another resident said that the locals had “been dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression and post-traumatic stress related to the hurricane. It’s not just adults. It’s adolescents and children, too.”

(E! News and NBC News are part of the NBCUniversal family.)