In the midst of an unusually quiet Atlantic hurricane season, a new tropical storm has been named, and it's carrying a name filled with bittersweet happenstance: Dolly.

It’s a name that conjures up rhinestones, big hair and a famously generous heart. But before we all start quoting "9 to 5" wind speeds, or “big wind's comin' from daylight til dusk,” the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) did not name the storm after Dolly Parton.

In fact, the name Dolly has been in the hurricane rotation since Dolly Parton was just 7 years old.

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Why is this storm named Dolly?

Hurricane names aren't chosen on a whim or timed to pop culture significance, even if we sometimes wish they would be.

(MORE: Tropical Storm Dolly forms, but it won't last long)

Storm names are managed by an international committee at the WMO, which maintains six lists of names used in rotation. The list being used for the 2026 season is the exact same list used in 2020, 2014, 2008, 2002, 1996 and every six years before that. Names are only retired and replaced if a storm is so deadly or costly that reusing it would be insensitive. For example, Andrew in 1992 and Katrina in 2005.

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"Dolly" first appeared on an Atlantic naming list back in 1953, the very first year the U.S. began using female names for storms. It predates Dolly Parton's debut album by 14 years.

Dolly Parton's connection to weather

Still, the country icon has always had a deep connection to the atmosphere. She has spent a career using the weather to explain the human heart. She captured the feeling of a storm finally breaking in her 1977 anthem "Light of a Clear Blue Morning," singing: "It's been a long dark night, and I've been a-waitin' for the morning... I can see the light of a clear blue morning." 

And as she famously reminded her fans many times: "If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

Her generosity spread far and wide following weather disasters as well. It’s estimated that through her lifetime, she donated more than $15 million to victims of weather events, most notably following the Great Smoky Mountain wildfires in 2016, the Middle Tennessee floods in 2021 and Hurricane Helene in 2024.

A more fitting tribute

But if the meteorological world truly wanted to honor a national treasure, I feel as though naming her after a hurricane is the wrong choice. Yes, Dolly was truly a force of nature, but hurricanes are destructive, chaotic and dangerous. Dolly Parton was none of that.

She deserves an atmospheric phenomenon that matches her spirit, something that glitters in the sky.

If we were handing out tributes, I feel as though the meteorological community would name a "sun dog" after her, the halo that forms around the sun that’s made of high-altitude ice crystals, essentially putting rhinestones in the sky.

Or better yet, nacreous clouds. Also known as mother-of-pearl clouds, these rare, iridescent formations occur high in the stratosphere. Because they are so high up, they catch the sunlight long after sunset, painting the sky in brilliant pastels.

They are rare, they are beautiful, and they light up the dark. That sounds a lot more like Dolly to me.