After one of the most destructive hurricane seasons ever, the names of four hurricanes are being retired. The World Meteorological Organization, the international body responsible for naming hurricanes, says it will no longer use Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate to name hurricanes. The organization says it retires names for hurricanes when "a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity."
The storms being retired this year include:
With these four, the names of 86 hurricanes have been retired since 1953, the year the National Hurricane Center began developing lists of names for Atlantic tropical storms. The lists are now maintained and updated by an international committee with the WMO. The names selected as replacements for possible use in 2023 are: Harold, Idalia, Margot and Nigel.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.