Weather Wiz Quiz: Do You Know Hurricanes?

The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season has a storm name on the list that has never been used before, due in part to what happened six years ago.

Meet 'Dexter': With three tropical storms already done this year, we've now reached the fourth named storm, which will be called "Dexter." Searching through NOAA's global tropical cyclone archive, we can't find a prior use of this name for a storm anywhere on Earth.

Name lists explained: Lists of names for global tropical cyclones are maintained and updated by a committee of the World Meteorological Organization, not the National Hurricane Center, nor any other national forecast center.

Weather in your inbox

Forecast Location

Sign Up

By signing up you agree to the Terms & Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe at any time.

In the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific basins, these name lists repeat every six years. Each year, the first storm gets the first name in the list, starting with the letter "A," followed by the "B" name for the second storm, etc.

If a given hurricane season produces more storms than names, supplemental lists for both the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific basins are then utilized, again starting with the "A" storm of that list.

Other regions, such as the Western Pacific Ocean, use rotating lists that simply pick up where the previous season left off, rather than starting each season in alphabetical order.

Where Dexter came from: Occasionally, a storm will be so deadly and destructive that its name is retired from future lists, to avoid any confusion or insensitivity of describing a future storm as, say, Katrina, Ian or Sandy. Think of these retired names as a "Hall of Infamy" for hurricanes and tropical storms.

That's what happened when 2019's "D" storm, Hurricane Dorian, stalled and clobbered the northwestern Bahamas at Category 5 intensity in early September. At least 74 people were killed, and damage at the time was estimated at $3.4 billion.

In spring 2021, the WMO hurricane committee voted to retire "Dorian" from the future Atlantic list, which would repeat in 2025. The name that replaced Dorian was Dexter.

Other 'D' Retirees: According to the National Hurricane Center, seven other "D" Atlantic Basin storm names have been retired since the mid-1950s. Most recently, 2007's Dean (Yucatan Peninsula) and 2005's Dennis (northern Gulf Coast) were retired. Others included Diana (1990), David (1979), Dora (1964), Donna (1960) and Diane (1955).

In the Eastern Pacific Basin, Dora (2023) has been the only "D" retiree. While Dora had only an indirect effect on the winds responsible for the devastating Maui firestorm, the WMO committee opted to retire the name out of a concern for sensitivity to the disaster.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.