How did Claudette get its name?
"The system that we have been tracking for a few days finally has enough of a well-defined center and organized convection to be considered a tropical storm." NEW ORLEANS  Its rare for a tropical cyclone to form over land, instead of over warm water which is the fuel for tropical systems. But early Saturday morning, the National Hurricane Center made the decision to name Tropical Storm Claudette after the system's center had already moved inland around Houma, Louisiana. Throughout Friday and into Saturday morning, the system maintained a messy and disorganized structure with almost no rain on the western/southern sides and a band of heavy rain far from the center - about 100 miles east of the center when the storm was named at 4 a.m. Saturday. Here is the National Hurricane Center's discussion of why they decided to upgrade the system to a tropical storm:  "The system that we have been tracking for a few days finally has enough of a well-defined center and organized convection to be considered a tropical storm. While the organization is not classical by any means, and there are some hybrid characteristics, the cyclone most resembles a sheared tropical storm, so the system is now Tropical Storm Claudette." While it is unusual, tropical cyclones have been named overland a few times in the past. The last time it happened in southeast Louisiana was August 1988 with Tropical Storm Beryl. In that case, a depression formed just north of Lake Pontchartrain before the system meandered south and became a tropical storm over water just east of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Claudette was named a tropical storm after the center had moved inland to Houma. It's rare for a tropical storm to form over land. Something similar happened in 1988 with Beryl. It became a tropical depression near Lake Pontchartrain and a tropical storm farther south. #beon4 pic.twitter.com/zSjY5v5n5Q  Alexandra Cranford WWL-TV (@alexandracranfo) June 19, 2021  In 2016, Tropical Storm Julia was named over Florida, and in 1977 Hurricane Clara started out as a depression over South Carolina.