National Hurricane Center drops ‘Gulf of Mexico’ for ‘Gulf of America’

The National Hurricane Center on Thursday joined other federal agencies making the official switch of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

On the NHC website, the new image of the Atlantic basin now shows the new label for the body of water known to brew up tropical activity and plague Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Mexico.

The switch comes after President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for the renaming, although other countries including Mexico are not adjusting their geographical labels.

The NHC’s daily tropical outlook, which through Wednesday still referred to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico shifted up Thursday morning.

It included a “Gulf of America Gale Warning” discussing a cold front that extended from the Florida Panhandle to just north of Veracruz, Mexico.

The front will move southeast through Thursday and reach from near Tampa Bay to just south of Veracruz by midnight, then begin to drift southeastward, according to NHC forecasters.

The front will have strong north to northeast winds behind it and prompt development of gales offshore of Tampico, Mexico through early Friday morning creating peak seas with 12- to 14-foot waves.

Labels for the Gulf of Mexico can still be found elsewhere on the NHC site, for now, such as the page with satellite imagery targeting various bodies of water where tropical activity is common.