Days after the death of country music legend Dolly Parton, a new storm could share her name. On Tuesday, meteorologists at the US National Hurricane Center spotted two windy areas in the North Atlantic they suspect could become storms.
When storms are particularly powerful – and potentially devastating – forecasters name them so people can be easily kept informed. Whichever of these two swirling blobs of low pressure first reaches winds of 39mph will be named Dolly, followed by Edouard.
What is Invest 96L?
Dolly, it seems, will be what is currently called AL96, also called Invest 96L, a bunch of thunderstorms roaring hundreds of miles south-southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands. The National Hurricane Center said on X that it has a 'medium' chance of becoming a named storm within the next 48 hours. If Tropical Storm Dolly's winds then reach over 73mph, it will become Hurricane Dolly.
Edouard, meanwhile, is a wobbly weather system called Invest 95L northeast of Bermuda that forecasters don't expect to strengthen.
Why is it called Dolly?
Parton died surrounded by loved ones in Nashville after a brief bout with cancer on Tuesday evening. She was 80. Weather officials have stressed that they have not named this grinding circle of low air pressure after the country superstar.
The Met Office told Metro that tropical storm names are agreed and published well in advance of the storm season. In this case, 'Dolly' is the fourth name on one of six decades-old lists written by the World Meteorological Organization, and the coincidence is just that. The UN agency rotates between these six alphabetical naming lists every storm season. Names are chosen to be short and snappy, easy to pronounce and familiar to different parts of the world. None are named after particular people.
What are this year's storm names?
The Atlantic hurricane season started in June and runs through November. Tropical Storm Arthur crashed into the Gulf Coast in June, before Tropical Storm Bertha dumped rain in Texas and Louisiana in July. Tropical Storm Cristobal, the third named storm, reached speeds of 46mph before fizzling out.
Where could Storm Dolly hit? Forecasting where a storm could hit before it's even formed is tricky. But the AccuWeather service told Newsweek that Invest 96L seems to be crawling towards the northern Lesser Antilles and may reach the Bahamas by later next week.
Previous Storm Dollies
If Tropical Storm Dolly does form, it wouldn't be the first major storm to share Parton's name. The first Dolly was in 1946 – which, again, by pure chance, was the year Parton was born in a one-room cabin on the banks of a Tennessee river. This Dolly, rather than a rhinestone-studded singer with a blond wig, was a typhoon that made landfall in eastern China.
'Dolly' made the official storm list in 1996 to replace the name Diana, a hurricane that struck Mexico in 1990 and killed 139 people. There have been four Tropical Storm Dollys, one of which curdled into a hurricane: 2002, Tropical Storm Dolly, which formed and dissipated out at sea; 2008, Hurricane Dolly, a Category 2 hurricane that tore through Texas and Mexico with 85mph winds, killing 22 people; 2014, Tropical Dolly, which came ashore in Mexico; and 2020, Tropical Storm Dolly, a depression southeast of Cape Cod that lasted two days.
We won't have another Dolly for a while, though. The 'D' storms of the next five years are: Danny, Danielle, Don, Debby and Dexter, with Deshawn as a back-up.
