Why do we retire hurricane names?

Question

Why do we retire hurricane names?

Answer 1

Only hurricanes that are catastrophic are retired such as, Andrew and Katrina. Smaller storms are not.

Answer 2

I always figured it was so nobody got confused as to which hurricane the weather man was actually talking about since they do compare them to ones in years prior.

It seems easier to say "Hurricane Ivan is looking a lot like Hurricane Charley" than to say "This year's Hurricane Ivan is looking a lot like Hurricane Ivan from 2000." Or the like.

I'm betting it's easier to find old files or videos on them as well since there wouldn't be several 'Ivans' in the files.

Answer 3

The reason why they retire hurricane names is because people can associate a particularly bad hurricane with a name.

Hurricane names are only retired when they are a major hurricane(Cat 3 or higher).

If hurricane Andrew was put back into the list and it strengthened to a category 5 then people might get the names mixed up.

That's about all there is to it.

Answer 4

I think it was considered "bad luck" to use the same names because of the destruction that they do...(?)

Answer 5

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 and then again in 2001.

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.