NBC 6’s Steve MacLaughlin breaks down how a name gets retired after being devastating to an area.
Since 1955, there have been a total of 94 Atlantic storm names retired.
Remarkably, 13 of those retired have come since 2016.
Storm names are created by the World Meteorological Organization. Each year’s list contains 21 names because Q, U, X, Y, and Z are skipped.
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HURRICANE SEASON PREPAREDNESS
Every six years, the lists repeat which means the 2022 list is the same as in 2016 until we get to the letter M. Since Matthew was retired after 2016, it has been replaced by Martin.
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Why do storms get retired? There are three main reasons: massive amounts of death, massive amounts of destruction or something meteorologically historic.
Over the last six hurricane seasons, some of the most-infamous storms of all time were retired, including Harvey, Irma, Maria, Dorian, Laura, Ida, Michael and Florence.
We can now say without any doubt at all that once a storm forms, climate change supercharges it, making it slower, wetter and stronger.
With more strong storms, more storms are likely to do epic things and be retired.
So when it comes to hurricane preparedness, the idea is to be prepared for the worst storm ever and hope that it never actually hits, because as we’ve seen in recent years with retired storms, it only takes one.
