Hurricane Names

This is the list I await every spring with the avidity of moviegoers looking at the list of Academy Award nominees, or young men trying to make the list of Ariana Grande's boyfriends.

It's the National Hurricane Center's list of names for the 2019 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season.


And the 2019 storms are: (envelope please...)


Andrea
Barry
Chantal
Dorian
Erin
Fernand
Gabrielle
Humberto
Imelda
Jerry
Karen
Lorenzo
Melissa
Nestor
Olga
Pablo
Rebekah
Sebastien
Tanya
Van
Wendy


As always, I'm sure I know someone in real life to go with each of these names. Some are historic - Nestor Chylak was a longtime American League baseball umpire, Len Barry was the stage name of the singer born Leonard Borisov, and we've all known Olga Skruyacef, right?

If you're scoring at home, hurricane season begins June 1 and continues through Nov. 30.

The NHC has been naming hurricanes since 1953; before that they were referred to as "The Big One of '47" or whatever. They recycle this list every six years, dropping the names of calamitous storms such as Agnes (1972), Andrew (1992), Bob (1991), Ike (2008) and Matthew (1996).

We may see storms as bad as those, but under different names.

As far as forecasts go, AccuWeather has the first guess of the year, and they call for 12 to 14 hurricanes in 2019.

"We think that there will be a few less tropical storms and lower numbers in hurricanes, but again, the old saying is, ‘it only takes one’,” AccuWeather meteorologist Dan Kottlowski guessed.