Summer is right around the corner — and so is the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.
The first day of the season is coming up on June 1, and Sunday kicks off National Hurricane Preparedness Week.
The National Weather Service is hoping that will help kickstart preparations for those along the nation’s coastlines.
So far one group, Colorado State University, is forecasting a below-average number of storms this season.
What is an average season like? According to NOAA an average hurricane season has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
So what names are on the list for storms for 2023?
Tropical storms and hurricanes in each ocean basin are named from their own list that repeats every six years. So the 2023 lists were last used in 2017.
2017 was a particularly bad year for hurricanes in the Atlantic, and four storm names were retired from the Atlantic list and replaced for this year. (A storm name is retired by the World Meteorological Organization if it was especially deadly or destructive.)
The retired names from 2017 are Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate.
Here’s a look at the 2023 list of names, and the debut of the new names:
Arlene
Bret
Cindy
Don
Emily
Franklin
Gert
Harold (replaces Harvey)
Idalia (replaces Irma)
Jose
Katia
Lee
Margot (replaces Maria)
Nigel (replaces Nate)
Ophelia
Philippe
Rina
Sean
Tammy
Vince
Whitney