Hurricane season officially begins on Friday. So this is an appropriate time to look at the names we'll be using for storms that form in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean. As usual, the list is alphabetical, with alternating men's and women's names. The first storm that forms will be called Allison.

If you have a good memory of tropical systems, you might look at this list and think that some of the names have been used before. And indeed, you'd be right - this is the same list that was used six years ago, in 1995, and six years before that, in 1989. There are actually six lists that are rotated, so this list will be used again in 2007. And last year's list will come back in 2006. And so on.

The only exception to this six-year rotation rule is that storm names can be retired if the hurricane is so deadly or costly that using its name again would be confusing or inappropriate. And in fact, four names that were on this list the last time it was used, in 1995, have been retired - Luis was replaced by Lorenzo, Marilyn by Michelle, Opal by Olga, and Roxanne by Rebekah.