Tropical Names Retired

Each year, a committee of the World Meteorological Organization takes a look back at the previous hurricane season to decide if any of the storms produced so much damage or so many fatalities that it would be inappropriate to continue using those names in the future. Through the decades, those of us in North Carolina have been affected by a number of such storms, with names like Hazel, Fran, Floyd and others long since removed from the Atlantic list, which otherwise reuses the same set of names every sixth year.

Three of the Atlantic names that would have cropped up again in 2014, however, will not do so, as Gustav, Ike and Paloma join the list of retired names, due to millions in damages and significant loss of life. For more details on the impacts of those storms, see the link to NOAA's press release announcing the removal of those names from the active list. I've also included links to the list of all the Atlantic storm names that have been retired through the years, and to individual storm summaries for 2008, including Gustav, Ike and Paloma.

Hard to believe we're less than a month away from the 2009 hurricane season already!