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A proactive state of emergency has been called in the US state of Florida because Invest 97L may be on its way. I looked at https://zoom.earth/storms/97l-2024/ and then started going arond the world and found two more purple dots named "Invest" + two digits + one letter. It looks like hyphen and four digit year should follow. Click each image below for a larger view.

Question(s):

  1. What does the "Invest" monicker mean? What is the origin of this term?
  2. What do the subsequent strings like 97L, 91W and 95E mean?

Invest 97L https://zoom.earth/storms/97l-2024/

Invest 91W https://zoom.earth/storms/91w-2024/

Invest 95E https://zoom.earth/storms/95e-2024/

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Invest-97L eventually became Atlantic Tropical Depression 04, and then later, Tropical Storm Debby, and then later yet, Hurricane Debby.

"Invests" are areas of tropical weather meteorologists deem to be worthy of deeper investigation. Sometimes they fizzle out, sometimes they hit land without becoming a full-blown tropical system, but other times they intensify as did Invest-97L.

The letter at the end denotes the part of the ocean in which the invest lies. Ordered alphabetically,

  • A is for an area of investigation in the Arabian Sea,
  • B is for an area of investigation in the Bay of Bengal,
  • C is for an area of investigation in the North Central Pacific Ocean,
  • E is for an area of investigation in the North East Pacific Ocean,
  • L is for an area of investigation in the North Atlantic Ocean,
  • M is for an area of investigation in the Mediterranean Ocean,
  • P is for an area of investigation in the South Pacific Ocean,
  • Q is for an area of investigation in the South Atlantic Ocean,
  • S is for an area of investigation in the South Indian Ocean, and
  • W is for an area of investigation in the North West Pacific Ocean.

The numbers range from 90 to 99 and then recycle (within each region) over the course of a storm season, under the assumption that there will be at most ten simultaneous areas worthy of investigation in any given region.

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  • $\begingroup$ Cool, thanks! "...under the assumption that there will be at most ten..." I wonder if this too will be subject to global warming-induced record-breaking. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Commented Aug 10 at 14:49

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