page_title: Tropical cyclone naming
section_title: Australia
hierarchical_section_title: Tropical cyclone naming / Australian Region (90°E – 160°E) / Australia
caption_attribution_description: English: Severe Tropical Cyclone Harold on April 6, 2020
context_page_description: Tropical cyclones and subtropical cyclones are named by various warning centers to simplify communication between forecasters and the general public regarding forecasts, watches, and warnings. The names are intended to reduce confusion in the event of concurrent storms in the same basin. Generally once storms produce sustained wind speeds of more than 33 knots, names are assigned in order from predetermined lists depending on which basin they originate. However, standards vary from basin to basin: some tropical depressions are named in the Western Pacific, while tropical cyclones must have a significant amount of gale-force winds occurring around the centre before they are named in the Southern Hemisphere.
  Before the formal start of naming, tropical cyclones were named after places, objects, or saints' feast days on which they occurred. The credit for the first usage of personal names for weather systems is generally given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named systems between 1887 and 1907.
context_section_description: When a system develops into a tropical cyclone below 10°S between 90°E and 160°E, then it will be named by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). The names are assigned in alphabetical order and used in rotating order without regard to year.
caption: Cyclone Harold at peak intensity in April 2020
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