October 24, 2005 (HDW) Miami, Florida - While Hurricane Wilma was bringing high winds and rain to western Cuba, newly formed Tropical Storm Alpha was raining on eastern Cuba and the island of Hispaniola. Alpha is the 22nd named storm of the 2005 hurricane season, exhausting the entire alphabetical list of names chosen by the National Hurricane Center. The naming system moves on to naming storms by letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha, beta, gamma, and so on) when the other names run out. This season is the first time that this part of the naming system has been called into use.
A NASA satellite took the above picture of Alpha at 1:40 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, on October 23, 2005. At this time, Alpha had developed into a tropical storm and was weakening back into a less-powerful tropical depression, even though some of the spiral structure characteristic of tropical storms can be seen in this image. Sustained winds in the storm ran as high as 55 kilometers per hour (35 miles per hour), and the storm brought substantial rains to the area. This heavy rain was responsible for three deaths reported in Haiti, in which individuals were drowned when flash flooding overwhelmed them.