Could we run out of hurricane names?

Doyle Rice | USA TODAY

While the Atlantic hurricane season has been mercifully quiet, with only four named storms, that certainly hasn't been the case in the eastern Pacific basin, where 15 named storms have already formed.

This includes Hurricane Norbert, the remnants of which brought record flooding to the Southwest earlier this week. It also includes Tropical Storm Odile, which formed early Wednesday. Odile (oh-DEAL) is forecast to become a hurricane and skirt along Mexico's Baja Peninsula over the next few days.

Since they're already up to the "O" storm in the Pacific, there's a chance the National Hurricane Center could run out of names. "With Odile having formed today, there are nine names yet to go," said NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen. "If the list is exhausted, we would use the Greek alphabet."

That happened in the Atlantic in 2005, when a total of 27 named storms formed, forcing the hurricane center to use such names as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta.

The eastern Pacific has never run out of names, though "it's come close," Feltgen said.

"There are 24 names on the eastern Pacific list (the letters 'Q' and 'U' are not used in that basin)," he said. "In 1992, there were 24 named storms, from Agatha to Zeke. It would have been 25, had a tropical depression strengthened into a tropical storm before crossing 140 West longitude into the Central Pacific Ocean.

"That depression became "Iniki" and went on to strike Hawaii," he said. Iniki killed six people and was the strongest and most destructive hurricane to strike Hawaii in recorded history.

The eastern Pacific season was forecast to be quite active this year, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicting that 14 to 20 named storms would form.

The remaining nine names in the eastern Pacific this year are Polo, Rachel, Simon, Trudy, Vance, Winnie, Xavier, Yolanda and Zeke.