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HudsonLunatic writes:

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season continues to shatter records with Tropical Storm Beta [noaa.gov] churning in the Gulf of Mexico. When the normal list of names is exhausted, the Greek alphabet is used for storm names. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season also went into the Greek alphabet and became a major hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph at the storm's peak intensity. Hurricane Beta (2005) didn't form until October 26, 2005 making the 2020 season over a month ahead of the pace of the record breaking 2005 season. This raises the conundrum of whether to retire letters of the Greek alphabet [washingtonpost.com] if a storm is particularly damaging. It appears the name would not be fully retired [wpde.com] but a storm could be retired with a name like "Beta 2020" with the Greek letter remaining in use for future seasons. The extremely active hurricane season can probably be attributed significantly to climate change [washingtonpost.com].

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