Jean Keenan, age 10, of Huntsville, Ala., for her question:

WHY DO HURRICANES HAVE GIRLS' NAMES?

A hurricane is a strong, swirling storm that usually measures several hundred miles in diameter. Winds blow at 75 miles an hour or more. Death and destruction, unfortunately, are too often part of the hurricane's story. The eye of the hurricane, often measuring 20 miles wide, is usually calm and has no clouds.

When low air pressure forms over tropical regions, a hurricane can develop. In the North Pacific, such a storm is called a typhoon; one in the South Pacific or Indian Ocean is called a cyclone.

In the United States, most hurricanes are from the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. They occur from June through November, with most of them coming in September.

In order to know which storm you were talking about, since there are times when perhaps three may be active or forming in the Atlantic between the Cape Verde Islands to the western Caribbean Sea, the U.S. Weather Service in the past simply numbered them. The numbering system was later changed to the Greek alphabet: alpha, beta, gamma, delta and so on.

Then, during World War II, the service decided to humanize the system by giving the hurricanes the names of girls. Ten lists of names were made up, arranging the names of girls alphabetically but leaving out the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z. Every 10 years the list is repeated.

Here is the 1977 list of Atlantic hurricanes that will again be used in 1987:

Anita, Babe, Clara, Dorothy, Evelyn, Frieda, Grace, Hannah, Ida, Jodie, Kristina, Lois, Mary, Nora, Odel, Penny, Raquel, Sophia, Trudy, Virginia and Willene.

It is much easier for the weather bureau experts who are tracking a series of storms to talk about Dorothy, Evelyn and Frieda than to say Four, Five and Six.

Weather service also names the Pacific storms that move out of tropical Mexico. Here's the 1977 list of names:

Ava, Bernice, Claudia, Dorene, Emily, Florence, Glenda, Heather, Irah, Jennifer, Katherine, Lillian, Mona, Natalie,

Odessa, Prudence, Roslyn, Sylvia, Tillie, Victoria and Wallie.

The Pacific tropical storm names are repeated every four years, rather than every 10 as with the Atlantic hurricanes. The current list, therefore, will be used again in 1981.

Some recent destructive hurricanes include Fifi in 1974 where about 8,000 people were killed in Honduras. Agnes caused $2 billion in damage from North Carolina to New York and killed 122 people in 1972. Hurricane Camille killed 250 persons in seven states from Louisiana to Virginia in 1969.