“Tropical Storm Danny formed Monday afternoon off South Carolina’s coast, and forecasters said the storm is expected to race inland over the U.S. Southeast while dumping several inches of rain in some spots. The fourth named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season formed close to South Carolina’s coast and had top sustained winds of 40 mph (65kph) with higher guests at midafternoon. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm was located at 3 p.m. about 60 miles (95 kilometers) east-southeast of Beaufort, South Carolina. The storm was headed to the west-northwest at 16 mph (26 kph) and was expected to dump several inches of rain on some parts of South Carolina and Georgia on its trek inland” the AP reports.

To our knowledge The National Hurricane Center – the government agency responsible for tracking, monitoring, and naming Atlantic and Eastern Pacific tropical cyclones – does not have a policy of dropping informal names to more proper ones when the storms mature and reach hurricane strength, but it should be a thing. For example say, “Tropical Storm Frankie” and “Tropical Storm Maggie” should be upgraded to “Hurricane Francis” and “Hurricane Margaret”, respectively, so citizens in their paths are inclined to take them more seriously and prepare accordingly.

The only potential hurdle is the ordinal alphabetical nature of the naming system, so for example a situation where “Tropical Storm Liz” needs to be upgraded to “Hurricane Elizabeth” would obviously screw things up since the National Hurricane System would be backtracking, so they should think ahead and make sure when they pick an informal name that the formal version begins with the same letter. So “Bobby” is a no, but “Robby” is fine, because “Robert”. “Willy”: yes. “Billy”: No.