ORLANDO, Fla. — The agency responsible for managing the rotating lists of names that are given to tropical cyclones announced Wednesday that two names from 2022 won’t be used again.
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The World Meteorological Organization uses the lists of storm names generally to avoid confusion and to help communicate storm warnings about potentially life-threatening risks.
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For Atlantic storms, the names are repeated once every six years unless a storm is deemed so deadly or costly that continued use of the name on a different storm would be considered inappropriate or insensitive.
At this year’s naming convention, the WMO’s Hurricane Committee decided that two storm names from 2022- Fiona and Ian- qualified for retirement “because of the death and destruction they caused in Central America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada.” They will be replaced with Farrah and Idris.
WMO retires #Fiona and #Ian because of the death and destruction in 2022, replaces them with Farrah and Idris
— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) March 29, 2023
We name #hurricanes to communicate hazards. Improved forecasts and disaster management have reduced casualties#EarlyWarningsForAll are vital!https://t.co/t9e9bteysp pic.twitter.com/IRvi4HSepu
According to the WMO, Fiona struck the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Turks and Caicos in September of 2022 as a large, powerful hurricane before it moved north and struck Canada as a strong post-tropical cyclone.
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Fiona caused significant flooding in Puerto Rico, producing more than $3-billion dollars in damage across the Caribbean and Canada. In all, Fiona was directly or indirectly responsible for 29 deaths.
Shortly after Fiona struck, Ian formed and hit Cuba as a category 4 hurricane before also making landfall in Southwest Florida as a category 4 storm.
According to the WMO, the storm surge from Ian was responsible for more than 150 deaths and more than $112-billion in damage in the U.S.
Ian would go down as the single most costly hurricane in Florida’s history and the third costliest in U.S. history.
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In all, the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season produced 14 named storms, eight of which became hurricanes with winds of 74 miles-per-hour or higher.
This year’s annual naming session was the Hurricane Committee’s first face-to-face meeting since 2019. It takes place each year from March 27 to March 31 in San Jose, CA and is hosted by the national meteorological and hydrological service of Costa Rica.
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