Published: March 31, 2020
There have been 89 hurricane or tropical storm names retired from future use in the Atlantic Basin, but Hurricane Dorian will not be the 90th entry on that list – at least not this year – despite the disastrous impacts it caused in 2019.
Atlantic tropical cyclone name lists repeat every six years unless a storm is so severe that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) hurricane committee votes to retire that name from future lists. This avoids the use of, say, Harvey, Katrina, Maria or Sandy to describe a future weak, open-ocean tropical storm.
The WMO committee usually holds a weeklong meeting every spring, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year's meeting was canceled several weeks ago, according to Dennis Feltgen, Communications and Public Affairs Officer at the National Hurricane Center.
Instead, the hurricane committee members met for a few hours Tuesday morning via videoconference, Feltgen said, noting that there was no discussion about the potential retirement of any names from the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season. The agenda was strictly about the upcoming 2020 season.
The next scheduled meeting of the hurricane committee is in spring 2021, when the potential retirement of any 2019 and 2020 hurricane names will be included in the discussions.
While all we can do is speculate, it seems likely that the WMO will retire Dorian at their annual meeting next spring. We can also argue for the retirement of Imelda and Lorenzo. Here's why.
2019's Potential Retirees
Dorian
Dorian's two-week rampage through the Atlantic caused damage from the eastern Caribbean to Nova Scotia, Canada, but its most devastating impacts were in the northern Bahamas, where it struck as a Category 5.
Hurricane Dorian when it first became a Category 5 on Sept. 1, 2019.
Dorian's maximum sustained winds jumped from 150 to 185 mph in 12 hours early Sept. 1. That increase in winds coincided with Dorian's landfall on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas.
The northwestern Bahamas suffered catastrophic damage from extreme winds and storm-surge flooding. Those impacts were worsened by the fact that Dorian slowed to a crawl, with its eyewall lashing the northwestern Bahamas for 51 straight hours.
Dorian's curling, parallel track off the southeastern U.S. coast was just far enough offshore to prevent significant impacts in Florida and Georgia. It eventually made landfall in North Carolina's Outer Banks as a Category 1 hurricane. The total cost of the damage from storm-surge flooding, rainfall flooding and tornadoes in the U.S. was $1.6 billion, according to NOAA.
Imelda
Tropical Storm Imelda proved once again why a potent hurricane is not required for disastrous impacts.
A car sits in floodwaters on Highway 124 on Sept. 20, 2019, in Beaumont, Texas.
Imelda was a short-lived storm that formed and made landfall on the upper Texas coast in a matter of a few hours. The storm then meandered through southeastern Texas, where it brought extreme rainfall and major flooding.
Rainfall totals exceeded 30 inches in several counties of southeastern Texas. The maximum total was 44.29 inches south-southwest of Fannett, Texas.
Imelda's floodwaters caused $5 billion in damage, according to NOAA. Many thousands of homes, cars and businesses were inundated. Five deaths were blamed on Imelda's flooding.
If retired next year, Imelda would join only two other Atlantic retirees to never attain hurricane status. They were 2015's Tropical Storm Erika and 2001's Tropical Storm Allison.
Lorenzo
Hurricane Lorenzo intensified into a Category 5 on Sept. 28 in a region of the eastern Atlantic where no other hurricanes of that strength had ever been recorded.
Well it’s official. #Lorenzo has made category 5 with 160 mph sustained winds. Crazy it made it almost ten degrees (600 miles) east of the previous easternmost cat 5 Hugo! nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/M…
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Lorenzo eventually moved near the Azores in the northeastern Atlantic as a Category 1, where its strong winds and battering surf caused moderate damage, according to the National Hurricane Center.
There were 19 direct deaths blamed on Lorenzo, but none of them were in the Azores.
The tugboat Bourbon Rhode sank when Lorenzo was rapidly intensifying in the Atlantic. All 11 crewmembers on the boat were killed.
An additional eight deaths along the U.S. East Coast were blamed on rip currents and dangerous surf conditions generated by Lorenzo's swells hundreds of miles away.
Retired Name History in the Atlantic Basin
Since the naming of Atlantic tropical cyclones ditched the phonetic alphabet in 1953, 89 Atlantic tropical cyclone names had been retired through 2018.
The most retirees for a single year was five during the hyperactive 2005 hurricane season. 2017 joined the 2004, 1995 and 1955 seasons with four retired names.
Only 19 seasons have not had a name retired, most recently in 2014. Another 25 seasons, through 2018, had multiple names removed from future use.
Names beginning with the letter "I" lead the retirees with 11, followed by nine "C" storms and nine "F" storms. Nine of those "I" storms have been retired since 2001 alone, including a four-year streak from 2001 through 2004 (Iris, Isidore, Isabel and Ivan, in that order). Wilma in 2005 is the latest-in-the-alphabet retiree.
Some names you'll instantly recognize. Others, not so much.
For example, Katrina, Rita and Wilma are the big three you probably remember from 2005. You might have forgotten about Dennis and Stan, however. Did you know Stan may have been more deadly than Katrina?
Previously retired Atlantic storms weren't all necessarily intense Category 3, 4 or 5 hurricanes. In fact, several were retired because of their deadly flooding in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America or the U.S.
Some examples of this include 2018's Florence, 2017's Nate, 2013's Ingrid in Mexico, 1996's Hortense in Puerto Rico and 1972's Agnes in the eastern U.S.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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