I just found out something I had wondered about for a while but never actively pursued the answer to: What happens if there are more named tropical storms and hurricanes than letters? With Hurricane Rita in the Gulf of Mexico right now, that leaves only Stan, Tammy, Vince, and Wilma as potential storm names for 2005 with several weeks left in the season. (No names starting with Q, U, X, Y, Z are used.) Once these four names are exhausted, the National Hurricane Center switches to the Greek alphabet, and so a fifth storm would be called Hurricane Alpha. Let us hope that the national media doesn't have to deal with trying to say Hurricane Xi.