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American Morning

Ask CNN: How are Hurricanes Named?

Aired August 24, 2001 - 09:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NEAL TOMASIN: Hello, I'm Neal Tomasin from West New York, New Jersey, and I'd like to know, how are hurricanes named?

MAX MAYFIELD, OFFICIAL, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: Under the United Nations, there's something called the WMO, the World Meteorological Organization, and it's divided into different regions around the globe.

We have a hurricane committee, and this committee gets together every year and comes out with an operational plan. Within that plan, we have these six lists of names for each basin. We have six lists for the Atlantic Basin and six lists for the Eastern Pacific Basin. We'll start with the letter a on the given list and go as far as we need on the alphabet, and then we'll recycle that same list six years from now. If we have a hurricane that causes large loss of life and a lot of damage, we'll retire that name and replace it with another name. So if we retire, say, a French name for example, it will be replaced with a like French name.

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