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I got a couple of weather questions you can help me with: 1) I know Hurricane Ernesto has been around for a bit and then we heard about John, now this week we're hearing about Florence. I thought they were named in alphabetical order. Was Florence just a number until recently? 2) When Meteorologists talk about wind speed and direction, sometimes they will say it's calm but on the graphic they show a direction (N) but the speed will be zero. How is that possible?
Take Care, Gordon W.
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When a tropical low reaches tropical storm strength it's given a name, before then, it gets a number. Today on September 12 we have Tropical Depression 8 or TD-8 for short, when it becomes a storm and has winds speeds of 39 mph, it will receive a name.
When storms are named, the list does go in alphabetical order. While you may not hear about some storms, they do all get names, some of them might not effect land but they are still named. Depending on when the storm forms, that's the naming time.
The storms in different oceans have different names. Ernesto was an Atlantic storm and John was in the Pacific. Check out the link to the name lists and you can see the names for different storms for this year and future years. Actually, your name is on the list year and has already formed in the Atlantic.
To answer your other question about wind speeds: If the wind is north at zero, it's calm. The graphic if you are watching television is sometimes an automated one. Some weather computers can't deal with the 0 and change it over to calm and it will just default to north for direction. If there is no wind or it's calm, it has no wind speed and doesn't have a direction, you were right to be confused!
Answered by KSL Meteorologist Dina Freedman.
