2023 Cyclone Retirement (Poll Included at Top) Dora / Otis retired

[Category5Kaiju]

I'm no longer sure Idalia is a lock for retirement, given its landfall in such an unpopulated location and weakening just before landfall.

Of course, information from many affected areas has yet to come to light but so far it seems comparable to Hurricane Sally of 2020, which was not retired despite heavy, but "sub-catastrophic" (compared to something on the level of, say, Ian, Katrina, Andrew, Irma, Maria, Dorian, even Michael) impacts.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Big Bend of Florida has never seen such a powerful storm specifically hit them since the 1800s from what I know.

[SconnieCane]

I'm no longer sure Idalia is a lock for retirement, given its landfall in such an unpopulated location and weakening just before landfall.

Of course, information from many affected areas has yet to come to light but so far it seems comparable to Hurricane Sally of 2020, which was not retired despite heavy, but "sub-catastrophic" (compared to something on the level of, say, Ian, Katrina, Andrew, Irma, Maria, Dorian, even Michael) impacts.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Big Bend of Florida has never seen such a powerful storm specifically hit them since the 1800s from what I know.

That is true, and that makes it historically/meteorologically noteworthy, but since it doesn't relate directly to impacts, those factors seem to play into retirement decisions rather subjectively.

[ScottNAtlanta]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

[Hurricane2022]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

Indira, Ivani, IIsa, Ieda, Isa, Ivy, Ivone....

[Tekken_Guy]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

I’m not sure Idalia is a lock to get retired because it hit a sparsely populated area, and may carry a price tag closer to Sally’s than to Ian’s or even Michael’s.

[Category5Kaiju]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

Indira, Imogen, Inga, Ivy, and Inessa are my favorites

But I do think it might be wise to wait and see the damage/death toll in the end. Upon second thought, Idalia may not be as "locked in" for retirement as some other recent hurricanes like Ida, Michael, Ian, Harvey, etc. due to the sparsely populated area it hit.

[Hurricanehink]

Indira, Ivani, IIsa, Iris, Isa, Ivy, Ivone....

Iris was retired in 2001, starting the longest streak of years with retired I storms. Iris, Isidore, Isabel, and Ivan were retired from 2001-2004. If you include Iota, and Idalia is retired, then 2020-23 are another four year streak of years with retired I names.

[Hurricane2022]

Indira, Ivani, IIsa, Iris, Isa, Ivy, Ivone....

Iris was retired in 2001, starting the longest streak of years with retired I storms.

Oh I forgot this

[Nuno]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

I’m not sure Idalia is a lock to get retired because it hit a sparsely populated area, and may carry a price tag closer to Sally’s than to Ian’s or even Michael’s.

Yeah, I'm with this. Every landfalling cyclone in the Gulf and East Coast is now bound to rack up $10b+ in damage as is the nature of urbanization but it doesn't necessarily mean they'll all be retired. It is early in assessing the damage but early returns don't necessarily show "catastrophic" damage and the loss of life we'd expect in a retired name.

We are running out of I names as is, lets not look for excuses to retire every single one now

[Woofde]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

I’m not sure Idalia is a lock to get retired because it hit a sparsely populated area, and may carry a price tag closer to Sally’s than to Ian’s or even Michael’s.

The area Idalia hit might not be very populated, but it hit them hard. Those people would not be very happy to have another Idalia facing down on them.

If it isn't retired, I think that is a clear indication that the criteria for retirement has increased in light of the recent spree of intense landfalling storms.

A lot of it will be contextual. Sally happened in 2020, surrounded by a lot of far flashier impactful storms. If 2023 doesn't have another storm that overshadows it, I think its close to a guaranteed retirement.

[chaser1]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

Isis??

[Nuno]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

I’m not sure Idalia is a lock to get retired because it hit a sparsely populated area, and may carry a price tag closer to Sally’s than to Ian’s or even Michael’s.

The area Idalia hit might not be very populated, but it hit them hard. Those people would not be very happy to have another Idalia facing down on them.

If it isn't retired, I think that is a clear indication that the criteria for retirement has increased in light of the recent spree of intense landfalling storms.

A lot of it will be contextual. Sally happened in 2020, surrounded by a lot of far flashier impactful storms. If 2023 doesn't have another storm that overshadows it, I think its close to a guaranteed retirement.

Those people would not be very happy to have ANY storm facing down on them, forget the name And there aren't many people there to begin with

Not to come off as callous, but I very much think name retirement at times was kind of loose and if we're having so many storms make landfall, we either need to adopt the WPAC naming scheme rotation method and abandon our insistence of the alphabet or simply accept these are *very* normal occurrences now and reserve retirement for the Ida's and Ian's of the cyclone world. I would think using names from other basins even if retired could be appropriate, or unretiring names after 75-100 years perhaps. As destructive as say, Hazel was, I doubt there would be people truly offended at that name returning in 2030.

[Teban54]

Isis??

Not sure if that's a joke, but Isis was actually used on the EPAC naming lists before. It was taken out before the start of the 2016 season when it was supposed to be used again, for obvious reasons. It didn't even go through the proper retirement procedure (i.e. not retired due to heavy damage, and not decided after the season when it was previously used).

[Tekken_Guy]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

I’m not sure Idalia is a lock to get retired because it hit a sparsely populated area, and may carry a price tag closer to Sally’s than to Ian’s or even Michael’s.

The area Idalia hit might not be very populated, but it hit them hard. Those people would not be very happy to have another Idalia facing down on them.

If it isn't retired, I think that is a clear indication that the criteria for retirement has increased in light of the recent spree of intense landfalling storms.

A lot of it will be contextual. Sally happened in 2020, surrounded by a lot of far flashier impactful storms. If 2023 doesn't have another storm that overshadows it, I think its close to a guaranteed retirement.

This makes sense. I think that Isaac 2012 was well on its way to retirement until Sandy happened, and that Imelda might have gotten retired if not for Dorian (and COVID).

[Category5Kaiju]

Isis??

Not sure if that's a joke, but Isis was actually used on the EPAC naming lists before. It was taken out before the start of the 2016 season when it was supposed to be used again, for obvious reasons. It didn't even go through the proper retirement procedure (i.e. not retired due to heavy damage, and not decided after the season when it was previously used).

The EPAC has a history of retiring names that were just plain bad. Two other examples are Adolph and Knut (replaced with Alvin and Kenneth respectively). Honestly I have no clue who thought that it would be a good idea to have those original names on the EPAC naming list lol

[NotSparta]

Seeing how it is highly likely Idalia will be retired, what name do you think will it be replaced with?
I personally like the name Ina. Ivanka would be hysterical but would never be chosen. What do you think?

The real question is, when the I name in 2029 has to be retired, what will we replace that with?

[Teban54]

Some of my thoughts on possible retirement of Idalia, as people are debating it in all different places.

The idea of a "$10 billion price tag" for US retirement was mentioned a few times, and often supported by the existence of several damaging, billion-dollar storms post 2008 that were not retired by the US.

Here's a list of storms since 2009 that made between $1 billion and $10 billion in damage in the US, but did not receive a request for retirement by the US: Lee 2011, Isaac 2012, Imelda 2019, Hanna, Isaias, Sally, Delta, Zeta and Eta 2020, Elsa, Fred and Nicholas 2021, Nicole 2022.

However, the US did submit a retirement request for Fiona 2022 for its impacts in Puerto Rico, where it made $2.5 billion in damage (more than its monetary damage in Canada). Ultimately, Fiona's impacts in Canada were enough to be retired, but even if it went out to sea, it could still have been retired by the US.

Admittedly, this is a different case due to PR not being part of CONUS, and I'm not sure if it was because local officials in PR asked the US committee members to submit the retirement request on their behalf. But it at least suggests that the US does indeed consider retirements on a case-by-case basis and not have a flat threshold on price.

I also think the sparse population in the landfall region, while hopefully keeping the price tag down, should absolutely be factored into the decision for retirement beyond monetary damage. Suppose Idalia had the same cost as Sally ($7.3 billion, costliest hurricane to not be retired). Then the fact that Idalia hit a much smaller population would suggest that it hit a lot harder, had more severe localized impacts and is a more historic storm compared to Sally. Those people, despite being smaller in number, had their lives affected much more by Idalia, which is a much stronger argument for retirement than Sally had.

Also note that almost all the billion-dollar unretired storms I listed above either hit densely populated areas that have generally seen stronger storms before, and/or were overshadowed by other more significant US storms in the same year, and/or had questionable association between the name and the impacts (Lee, Imelda).

While Idalia may be a more borderline case for retirement than originally thought (thankfully), I still think it does warrant retirement based on what we know now. At least if it started with a more easily replaceable letter.

[Teban54]

Isis??

Not sure if that's a joke, but Isis was actually used on the EPAC naming lists before. It was taken out before the start of the 2016 season when it was supposed to be used again, for obvious reasons. It didn't even go through the proper retirement procedure (i.e. not retired due to heavy damage, and not decided after the season when it was previously used).

The EPAC has a history of retiring names that were just plain bad. Two other examples are Adolph and Knut (replaced with Alvin and Kenneth respectively). Honestly I have no clue who thought that it would be a good idea to have those original names on the EPAC naming list lol

Also Israel, which was on the same naming list as Adolph. It came under scrutiny right after Adolph 2001 blew up in the EPAC and gained publicity, and both names were replaced in the middle of the season before the I storm formed. But unlike Adolph, Israel was never used for a storm, because its replacement Ivo was already decided on by the time Ivo 2001 formed. (Israel was originally intended to be the replacement of Ismael 1995.)

[Category5Kaiju]

Some of my thoughts on possible retirement of Idalia, as people are debating it in all different places.

The idea of a "$10 billion price tag" for US retirement was mentioned a few times, and often supported by the existence of several damaging, billion-dollar storms post 2008 that were not retired by the US.

Here's a list of storms since 2009 that made between $1 billion and $10 billion in damage in the US, but did not receive a request for retirement by the US: Lee 2011, Isaac 2012, Imelda 2019, Hanna, Isaias, Sally, Delta, Zeta and Eta 2020, Elsa, Fred and Nicholas 2021, Nicole 2022.

However, the US did submit a retirement request for Fiona 2022 for its impacts in Puerto Rico, where it made $2.5 billion in damage (more than its monetary damage in Canada). Ultimately, Fiona's impacts in Canada were enough to be retired, but even if it went out to sea, it could still have been retired by the US.

Admittedly, this is a different case due to PR not being part of CONUS, and I'm not sure if it was because local officials in PR asked the US committee members to submit the retirement request on their behalf. But it at least suggests that the US does indeed consider retirements on a case-by-case basis and not have a flat threshold on price.

I also think the sparse population in the landfall region, while hopefully keeping the price tag down, should absolutely be factored into the decision for retirement beyond monetary damage. Suppose Idalia had the same cost as Sally ($7.3 billion, costliest hurricane to not be retired). Then the fact that Idalia hit a much smaller population would suggest that it hit a lot harder, had more severe localized impacts and is a more historic storm compared to Sally. Those people, despite being smaller in number, had their lives affected much more by Idalia, which is a much stronger argument for retirement than Sally had.

Also note that almost all the billion-dollar unretired storms I listed above either hit densely populated areas that have generally seen stronger storms before, and/or were overshadowed by other more significant US storms in the same year, and/or had questionable association between the name and the impacts (Lee, Imelda).

While Idalia may be a more borderline case for retirement than originally thought (thankfully), I still think it does warrant retirement based on what we know now. At least if it started with a more easily replaceable letter.

Good analysis there!

What I find especially interesting about hurricane name retirement is that it's clear that retired names are not created equal. Some, such as Hortense, Tomas, or Isidore, are not very "famous" (even at the scale of the population of wx enthusiasts in general) and are more remembered at a local level. Some, such as Ike, Harvey, or Ian, are much more memorable, especially for those who were directly impacted. And a select handful, mainly Sandy and Katrina, are remembered not only by the affected but also generically known at a nationwide level. Heck, as far as I can tell, Hurricane Katrina might as well be compared with 9/11 or COVID-19 in that it is a disaster that pretty much any person you ask would be familiar with.

[Hurricane Mike]

Good points all around, but my hunch is that Idalia will be retired.