2024 Cyclone Retirements (Breaking ATLC: Beryl, Helene, Milton; EPAC: John)

[MadaTheConquistador]

I was kind of hoping for Malcolm personally. Not sure why...I guess I must like it.

I see lol, there would be some funny Malcolm In The Middle memes if Milton's replacement was Malcolm instead of Miguel.

[galaxy401]

About what I expected. I wasn't sold on Debby being retired and Oscar and Rafael only had small chances.

Also they just replaced John with another 4 letter J name.

[AnnularCane]

I was kind of hoping for Malcolm personally. Not sure why...I guess I must like it.

I see lol, there would be some funny Malcolm In The Middle memes if Milton's replacement was Malcolm instead of Miguel.

Oh yeah, I didn't think about that. lol It's been a while since I've seen that show.

[Ulf]

Debby escapes getting axed likely because it reached Canada as a remnant after passing through the US rather than as a direct landfall.

Helene's replacement name, Holly, used to be on the list and had been used twice before in 1969 and 1976. The name was dropped when the WMO Hurricane Committee introduced the current system of six lists that include male names in 1979.

[Teban54]

I think Debby wasn't retired simply because the system that hit Canada wasn't really Debby anymore.

Wasn't that the case with Fiona as well?

I'd say Fiona is more similar to Sandy, while Debby is more similar to Lee (2011), just in different countries.

Sandy and Fiona were clearly advertised as a post-tropical cyclone with that specific name, during preparation, impact and aftermath. Local residents knew they were dealing with Fiona, and everyone clearly attributed all damages it caused to the name Fiona itself. Whether the system was tropical or post-tropical was purely academic at that point.

In contrast, while I'm not sure how exactly Debby's impacts were portrayed in the Canadian media, but with Lee, by the time it brought impacts to northeastern US where it caused the most damage, the public didn't think of them as due to Lee anymore. In their view, the storm had long since dissipated and the NHC had stopped issuing advisories days prior. The impacts felt no different from an average unnamed extratropical low with heavy rainfall; this time, the purely academic point was that the system was even associated with Lee in the first place.

This is not to say that a landfall advisory is needed for the name to be retired. The floods and mudslides in Costa Rica that caused Nate's retirement was already ongoing when the storm was named, and the storm's center was already pulling away from the country without ever making landfall there. Dora was retired largely because the media and scientists suspected that it contributed to the Hawaiian wildfires, even though the causal effect is still debated. But in both cases, there's a higher degree of media association between the name and the impacts (just that it came late for Nate), than there was for Lee in northeastern US and likely Debby in Canada.

[Teban54]

Aside:

With Dora, Otis and John retired in the 2023-2024 EPAC seasons, this marks the first time that three EPAC names were retired within a span of 2 years. Previously, at most 2 EPAC names were retired in any two consecutive years (many examples), and it took at least 3 years to retire three names (Manuel 2013, Odile 2014, Patricia 2015).

Of course, much of this was due to 2023 being the first EPAC season to retire two names.

[Hurricanehink]

Aside:

With Dora, Otis and John retired in the 2023-2024 EPAC seasons, this marks the first time that three EPAC names were retired within a span of 2 years. Previously, at most 2 EPAC names were retired in any two consecutive years (many examples), and it took at least 3 years to retire three names (Manuel 2013, Odile 2014, Patricia 2015).

Of course, much of this was due to 2023 being the first EPAC season to retire two names.

1997 also had two retirees, so there were three names were retired from 1995 (Ismael) to 1997 (Pauline/Paka). But good point about the three from 2023-2024 being a record.