Atlantic Hurricane Names

Atlantic Hurricane Names

When a really great athlete decides to leave sports, his jersey or number is often retired. The largest and most destructive storm in the tropics - the hurricane - makes a similar farewell. Hurricane names can and do get retired, not to be reused for at least ten years, perhaps longer.

Hurricanes that cause severe damage or kill and injure many people are remembered for generations and some go into hurricane history, says the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The country most affected can request that the storm's name be removed from use to avoid confusion caused by a future storm having the same name.

When a storm name is retired from the Atlantic's list of names, member countries of the World Meteorological Organization from that region select a new name. For Atlantic storms the name can be either French, Spanish or English, reflecting the languages of potential victims.

A good example is Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Hugo roared across the northeast Caribbean devastating many of the small islands east of Puerto Rico. It then skimmed Puerto Rico before slamming into South Carolina. Hurricane Hugo caused more than $8 billion damage and killed 82 people. Most of the deaths occurred on the tiny Caribbean islands. When the request was made to retire the name "Hugo" from the list of names, the "H" storm was replaced by the name "Humberto", a Spanish name. Humberto was used for the first time in 1995 - it became a hurricane in September with 105 mph winds. The storm stayed over the Atlantic, never threatening land.

The hurricane center says the "retirement rule" once had exceptions. Before 1979, when rotation of the permanent six-year storm list began, some storm names were simply not used anymore. In 1966, "Frieda" was replaced by "Fern" for no apparent reason.

Below is a list of deadly, costly and destructive storms whose names have been retired, guaranteeing them a place in hurricane history. This is not a complete list of deadly or destructive hurricanes since many such storms hit before 1950 when naming began.

*Affecting Louisiana

   
**The name "Carol" was used again to denote a hurricane in the mid-Atlantic Ocean in 1965. However, because the name does not appear after that time, it is assumed that the name was retired retrospectively for the damages caused by the 1954 storm of the same name.

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