TEXAS TROPICS

When it comes to storm names in the Atlantic, there may not be any more feared than those that start with the letter "I". And that's because of the 93 storm names that have been retired, nearly 12% have started with the letter "I". And if you count the Greek letter Iota, which was retired last year that isn't officially an "I" storm, that's 13% of the retired names starting with an "I". But Iota isn't really a name, it's a Greek letter, so we won't count it. For a storm name to be retired, it has to cause a lot of deaths and/or significant and lasting damage somewhere. Examples of some of the more memorable retired names, Carla in 1961, Camille in '69, Andrew in '92, Katrina in 2005, and Harvey in 2017. Those were all some powerful hurricanes that caused a lot of damage and death. Storms that we still talk about all of these years later. And a storm doesn't have to be powerful to get retired. Tropical storm All...

We’re about at that time of the year where the tropics start to heat up, particularly in the deep Atlantic in what is called the Main Development Region (MDR), where the majority of storms develop during a typical season. Also known as Cape Verde season, for a group of islands, called the Cape Verde Islands, just off the African coast, where tropical waves coming off the coast into the Atlantic, start seeing better conditions to develop and make the long journey across the Atlantic, a lot of times into our part of the world. These storms don’t necessarily develop near the Cape Verde islands, it’s just that the waves coming off the African coast stay together long enough to develop further instead of breaking apart and dissipating like so many early in the season do. About 60, give or take, of these tropical waves come off the African coast in a given season. Most never amount to anything, either dissipating, or some even make the long journey across the Atlantic as light to moderate th...