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There are so many ways people are paying tribute to country legend Dolly Parton following her death on Tuesday (Aug. 25) at age 80. From President Trump ordering the nation’s flags to fly at half-staff, to the Library of Congress honoring her good works and a drive to have the Nashville International Airport renamed in her honor, not to mention the raft of fellow artists honoring her and performing her songs in concert.
One of the weirdest, and, as it turns out, most unrelated tributes, however, spun up on Thursday (Aug. 27), just days after Parton’s passing, when a new tropical storm was forming in the Atlantic Ocean. That storm’s name? Dolly.
But, according to The Associated Press, the bizarre coincidence has nothing to do with Parton at all, but is merely an unexpected quirk of the naming convention used by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), by which a list of names is recycled every six years, with the ones in the Atlantic running in an alphabetical order and alternating male and female names.
So, while this season began with storms named Arthur in June, followed by Bertha in July and Cristobal, which flared up and then flamed out quickly earlier this month, the latest storm brewing was already fated to be called Dolly. For now, it’s not expected to turn into a major storm, but the National Hurricane Center issued a statement explaining the coincidence just in case.
“The timing of the use of the name Dolly for this storm is purely coincidental,” the organization said. “Tropical storm and hurricane names for the North Atlantic Basin originate from six predetermined rotating lists established by the World Meteorological Organization Region IV Hurricane Committee. The name Dolly replaced Diana after the 1990 hurricane season and was first used in 1996.”
The name, which was chosen 30 years ago by the WMO as part of the naming protocol using the rotating group of storm names, will not be changed. After each storm season, a committee for the North Atlantic basin reviews the names and decides if any should be retired due to severity and major loss of life and property; around 100 names have been retired from the Atlantic list to date.
There were a number of named “Dolly” storms and hurricanes during Parton’s lifetime, including 2008’s Category 2 storm, which hit southeast Texas, again in 2020 and for the first time in 1996 to replace “Diana,” a Category 2 that hit Mexico in 1990, killing 139 people.
At press time, Tropical Storm Dolly continues to move quickly westward toward the Leeward Islands, with heavy rains forecast for late Saturday into Sunday for the series of islands in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, with possible further impacts on the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola on Sunday and Monday. It was unclear at press time if the storm will make landfall in the U.S.
