At a Glance

It might be late winter, but hurricane season is just 100 days away.However, the last seven hurricane seasons have started early.There are two new names on the 2022 list, and recurring names with interesting recent history.

Hurricane season might be the last thing that comes to mind in late February, but Monday marks 100 days until the official June 1 start of the season in the Atlantic Basin.

The first tropical or subtropical storm of the season will be named Alex. If all 21 of the names on the list are exhausted through Walter, then a .

Last hurricane season produced exactly 21 named storms, using up the entire 2021 list through the name Wanda.

Hurricane names in the Atlantic Basin repeat every six years unless one is so destructive and/or deadly that a World Meteorological Organization committee votes to retire that name from future lists. This avoids the use of names like Katrina, Laura, Sandy or Maria to describe a future weak, open-ocean tropical storm.

This year's list was last used in 2016, but there are two new names in the 2022 version.

-Martin will replace Matthew as the "M" storm since it was retired after carving a deadly and destructive path from Haiti to the Carolinas.

-Owen will replace Otto as the "O" storm following its retirement as a Category 3 landfall in Central America in late November 2016.

Hurricane Matthew when it was a Category 5 in the Caribbean in October 2016.

(NASA)

There are some other notable past storms with names that will reappear in 2022.

-Hurricane Alex has been notable a few times. In 2004, Alex brushed by the Carolinas, bringing Category 1 conditions to the Outer Banks. That was followed by a July 2010 version of the hurricane that made landfall in northern Mexico, where it wrung out torrential, flooding rain in the Rio Grande Valley and Monterrey, Mexico. Finally, Alex in 2016 became an extremely rare January hurricane near the Azores.

-Hurricane Bonnie in August 1998 struck eastern North Carolina as a Category 3. It caused (CPI-adjusted).

-Hurricane Hermine made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region as a Category 1 in September 2016. From there, it tracked over Georgia and the Carolinas as a tropical storm.

According to NOAA's Hurricane Research Division, the June-through-November hurricane season was parsed out to capture .

However, the last seven consecutive Atlantic hurricane seasons have started early, before the June 1 "official" start date.

Two of those seasons had two named storms form before June 1, including 2020's tropical storms and in late May.

Named storms, hurricanes, and major (Category 3 or stronger) hurricanes by month from 1851 through 2013.

(NOAA/AOML)

It's never too early to prepare for the next potential tropical storm or hurricane strike if you live near coastal areas of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Ready.gov has tips to help .

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, .