From Andrea and Humberto to Sebastien and Wendy, 21 names are ready to be rolled out for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, which begins June 1.
The pre-selected list of names, chosen by an international committee of meteorologists, is repeated every six years. The lists are maintained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which also sets the criteria for choosing names.
Here is the 2025 list of hurricane names:
Names are given to storms once they develop into a tropical storm, the precursor to a hurricane. If all 21 names are used in a given season, then an alternate list of 21 additional names is ready to go. The 2024 hurricane season saw 18 named storms.
The hurricane naming convention was established in 1953 as a uniform way of addressing storms and avoiding confusion among meteorologists, the media, and the public while raising awareness of severe weather events.
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“The work of the Hurricane Committee is critical to ensuring that everyone in the region across the Atlantic and east Pacific basins is ready for the upcoming 2025 hurricane season, providing early warnings and reducing the impacts to life and property from these dangerous storms,” said Michael Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami and chair of the Hurricane Committee.
According to the WMO, the names must be instantly recognizable and ”culturally appropriate to each region. In the North Atlantic and Caribbean region, the names have to be suitable for English, French and Spanish-speaking communities.”
Names starting with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are not used because “it is difficult to find six suitable names (for each of the six rotating lists),” according to the WMO.
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New names are selected and added to lists in place of retired names, as needed.
The WMO recently retired the names of three ferocious 2024 hurricanes that took countless lives and caused catastrophic damage — Helene, Milton, and Beryl. The Hurricane Committee decides to retire a name when the hurricane is deemed so deadly and catastrophic that reusing the name would be “inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity.”
This year is forecast to see another active Atlantic hurricane season, with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures suggesting more named storms than the average 14 that develop in the Atlantic basin.
Separate lists of names are created for Eastern and Central North Pacific basin hurricanes. A different committee selects the names for typhoons - hurricanes that develop in the West Pacific.
Ken Mahan can be reached at ken.mahan@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @kenmahantheweatherman.