2011 Hurricane Season Starts Today

Today marks the start of the Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Central Pacific hurricane season.   From now until November 30 the local weathercasts include weather satellite imagery from the Caribbean, the Atlantic coast off western Africa and the mid Atlantic.   Our ears start perking up in H-town when the weatherman starts talking about tropical waves or depressions that we know all too well have the potential to turn into dangerous storms.     

We also start reviewing our family hurricane preparedness and evacuation plans and learning what the differences are between Category 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 storms are on the Saffir-Simpson scale

The list of hurricane names for the 2011 season has been released.    Since 1953 the National Hurricane Center has come up with six rotating lists of pre-approved names for tropical storms and hurricanes in English, French and Spanish for our sector of the planet.  The lists had only female names until 1979 when they were revised to add male names as well.  

Storms are also named chronologically.   The 'A' name on the list corresponds to the first storm of the hurricane season, and so on.  Names with 'Q' or 'U' aren't used, and when you run out of names as we did during the 2005 hurricane season when there were 27 tropical storms or hurricanes, the Greek alphabet is used.

Names on the rotating lists are retired when a deadly or costly hurricane makes landfall     This year's list was used during the extremely active 2005 hurricane season, so you'll note that the name Katrina was retired for obvious reasons.   Dennis, Rita, Stan, and Wilma were replaced as well

2011 Hurricane Names

Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katia, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince, Whitney

Because of long memories about trans Katrina evacuees such as Sharlie Dominique being mistreated at area shelters,  last year the Houston TG Center compiled lists of people in the area willing to house trans people in the event of a hurricane evacuation either here or from other areas of the Gulf Coast.   

Will have to check with Cristan to see if that program is in effect for this season as well.

So for the next six months we'll be casting a very nervous eye toward the Gulf of Mexico hoping we don't get another Carla, Alicia or Ike type storm in the area.