UPDATE: The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has retired Ian and Fiona from the list of Atlantic tropical cyclone names.
According to the WMO hurricane committee, Ian will be replaced by Idris and Fiona will be replaced by Farrah.
For more information from WMO, click here.
ORIGINAL STORY:
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) will formally decide on Wednesday, March 29 if the name Ian will be retired from the list of storm names used in the Atlantic Ocean basin.
The WMO is a specialty agency of the United Nations coordinating global cooperation on weather-related issues. One of those tasks is deciding the agreed-upon storm names that are used in the tropical ocean basins.
There’s no reason to believe the name Ian won’t be retired. Storm names are pulled out of the 6-year name rotation when they cause substantial devastation or have particularly high death tolls, two things Ian, unfortunately, did to our community.
If (but essentially when) the name Ian is formally retired on Wednesday, it will become the 95th storm name taken off the Atlantic storm name list. It will join other ominous systems like Andrew, Charley and Irma that also impacted our community and were later retired.
Once the name Ian is retired, it would fall on the WMO to select a different “I” named storm to take its place. That can become challenging because of all of the letters in the alphabet; more storms that start with the letter “I’ have been retired than any other.
Out of the 95 storm names that have been retired, 13 of those were “I” named storms. One big reason the “I” storms are retired the most is because the letter “I” tends to line up more with the peak of the hurricane season when storms are stronger. About 70% of the retired “I” storms ended up making landfall in the month of September, which is the climatological peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Hurricane Ian made landfall near Cayo Costa at 3:05 p.m. on Sept. 28, 2022. It was a high-end Category 4 hurricane at the time, with sustained winds of 150 mph around the eye. The hurricane produced a catastrophic storm surge on the order of 10 to 15 feet in portions of Lee County, with 71 deaths in the county.
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