Why wasn't Debby retired when Igor was?

[Dean_175]

Canada requested Igor be retired in 2010, which honestly I felt was silly. Impacts were not significant by regular standards. Less than 5 deaths and only 200 million in damages from Igor. Debby killed 18 and caused 4.5 billion dollars in damages and the most in Canadian history. However, this time , the WMO turned down Canada's request.

[Ulf]

Debby not getting retired means that Canada did not make a request for its retirement to begin with.

Igor, Fiona, and Juan all made direct landfalls on Canada's Atlantic coast which received warnings iirc while Debby did not. So that might be the reason.

[Category5Kaiju]

I think Ulf nailed the point. While Debby's remnants inflicted major damage in Quebec, I think they were not closely enough associated with the hurricane that Canada would recognize it as a tropical entity and request the name to be retired. As in, if you were to ask some random person in Quebec who was impacted by the rain/flooding, they probably would've thought it was just some very bad storm rather than connecting such to a hurricane immediately.

Storms like Igor and Fiona, when they made landfall, were immediately recognized as hurricanes, or at least ex-hurricanes.

[CrazyC83]

I think Ulf nailed the point. While Debby's remnants inflicted major damage in Quebec, I think they were not closely enough associated with the hurricane that Canada would recognize it as a tropical entity and request the name to be retired. As in, if you were to ask some random person in Quebec who was impacted by the rain/flooding, they probably would've thought it was just some very bad storm rather than connecting such to a hurricane immediately.

Storms like Igor and Fiona, when they made landfall, were immediately recognized as hurricanes, or at least ex-hurricanes.

Another factor might be the fact that the damage, from an intensity level, was greater for Igor and Fiona. Debby hit an area with over 10 million people, so it is much easier for the cost to get into the $1.8 billion range. It essentially is like a US hurricane doing that much damage in that sense - nothing extraordinary in this day and age. That would be comparable to Francine, which was very unlikely to have been retired.

(I think a repeat of Hazel 1954 would do over $20 billion USD in damage in Canada)