Students may wonder why a hurricane is given a woman's name like Camille and Betsy. For several hundred years, hurricanes in the West Indies were often named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane occurred. For example "Hurricane San Felipe" struck Puerto Rico on 13 September 1876. Another storm struck Puerto Rico on the same day in 1928, and this storm was named "Hurricane San Felipe the second" Later,latitude-longitude positions were adopted for naming hurricanes, which was convenient and accurate for meteorologists to track them. However,once the public began receiving storm warnings and trying to keep track of a particular storm path, this became complicated and confusing. In 1953,the National Weather Service picked up the habit of naval meteorologists of naming the storms after women. In their opinion, the storms' temperament seemed female enough, shifting directions at a whim on a moment's notice. Of course this was biased and unfair. In 1979, male names were inserted to alternate with the female names, to the delight of feminists. Currently,there are six lists of names in alphabetical order used for hurricanes. These lists rotate, one each year; the list of this year's names will not be reused for six years. The names get recycled each time the list comes up, with one exception: Storms so devastating that reusing the name is inappropriate. In this case, the name is taken off the list and another name is added to replace it. For instance, there will not be another Hurricane Andrew, because Andrew has been replaced by Alex on the list.
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