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Hurricane Season: The Letters to Look Out For
Of the 96 retired hurricane names, over 34% of those names come from only 3 letters.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Hurricane season starts June 1st and lasts until November 30th. But over that 183 day span some storms print their names in the history book.
Since 1954, there have been 96 Atlantic hurricane names that have been retired.
But out all those names, there are some letters that you need to look out for!
Hurricane name lists are composed to 21 names. Excluding the letters Q, U, X, Y, Z because of the lack of names that begin with those letters. There are 6 total lists that are recycled every 6 years.
These lists change slightly overtime as hurricane names are retired and replaced with new names if a storm causes catastrophic damage or leads to a significant loss of life.
The Top 3 most retired letters:
The Letter C:
C storm names have been retired 9 times. Here are some notables:
The last ‘C’ name retired was Charley back in 2004. The very first name to ever be retired was Carol, this category 3 scraped the Carolinas and is one of the worst in New England’s history.
And Camille in 1969 is one of only four category 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the United States
The Letter F:
‘F’ names have been retired 10 times. The 10th name was Fiona which was a devastating storm for Puerto Rico and the worst on record to ever hit Canada.
Some of the worst storms in the Carolinas history started with the letter F. Fran in 1996, Floyd in 1999 and Florence in 2018 holds the North Carolina Tropical Cyclone rain record.
The Letter I:
‘I’ names have been retired 13 times. Technically 14 if you include Iota (which came from the auxiliary list in 2020)
And 12 of those 14 have happened since the year 2000.
Ian in 2022 was the costliest hurricane in Florida history.
Ida topped winds of 150 mph in Louisiana back in 2021
And the list is packed with infamous names like
Ike, Irene, Isabel and Irma, which hit Florida as a category 4 in 2017.
‘I’ being the 9th letter of the alphabet, usually places these storms around the peak of hurricane season, which trends these storms to be stronger.
Over the last 30 years, an average hurricane season usually makes it to the letter N or the 14th letter.
Some honorable mentions:
D names have been retired 8 times such as Dorian in 2019.
A names 7 times lead by Andrew in 1992.
And H and M names were retired 6 times. Producing storms like Hugo and Harvey. Michael and Matthew.