Alma
The first tropical storm of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season (which starts annually on May 15, roughly two weeks earlier than the Atlantic season) has formed. Its name is Tropical Storm Alma, and it could cause a major flooding disaster in Central America.
The Atlantic hurricane season officially starts on Sunday -- not that that means anything, of course. The first named Atlantic storm will be Arthur.
In case anyone saw the version of this post that appeared for about 60 seconds before I fixed it, I must confess that I fell victim to an April Fool's Joke almost two months after the fact. I had a vague recollection that the "A" storm had already formed (as it turns out, I was thinking of last year, when Andrew formed in May), so I googled "Tropical Storm Arthur" and found this post by SciGuy. I then searched my own archives and was surprised to find no reference to Arthur, but I thought, eh, I just must not have blogged about it, for whatever reason. So I wrote in this post that the first storm, Arthur, had already formed, and the next one would be Bertha. But even after publishing that, I had the slightest hint of skepticism/confusion in my brain, so I checked the 2008 hurricane season page on Wikipedia -- and saw that Arthur was listed as "unused," which seemed very strange. Wikipedia doesn't usually miss something like that. A bit more Googling revealed no other references to Arthur, aside from SciGuy's. Then I realized: duh, that post was on April 1, 2008. I'm an idiot.
Posted by: Brendan | May 29, 2008 1:22:36 PM
So, is Alma going to strike anything called Mater?
Also, Arthur is a cool name for a Hurricane. Makes one think of Camelot.
Posted by: B. Minich | May 29, 2008 2:23:19 PM