Retiring Storm Names Due To Strength, Not Damage

[Morgan Palmer]

Interesting question, though I bet the answer is "no."

Let's look at a hypothetical. Frances, or another random storm, reaches an all time record low pressure, or record high recorded SFC wind from recon, but never touches land anywhere.

Might this sort of record setter be "retired" as a storm?

mp

 

[Larry J. Kosch]

Retired Hurricane Names

This is what I found on a website that deals with retired hurricane names:

When hurricanes are particularly destructive, their names are retired from the list of usable names. Any country affected by a particularly terrible storm can request that the name be retired by petitioning the World Meteorological Organization. A retired name cannot be reused for at least ten years, to facilitate historic references, legal actions, insurance claim activities, and to avoid public confusion with another storm of the same name.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781541.html

From that I would guess the answer would be no. That would be like Hurricane Andrew curving out into the Northern Atlantic instead of plowing straight into Florida and later into Louisiana.

Based on what we have seen with Hurricane Charley, it's a sure bet that name will be retired next year.

 

[rdale]

It's retired because the general public doesn't care about hurricanes that don't impact land... You can throw some big names out there and just about everyone will recognize them -- but throw some names of megahurricanes that didn't hit land and I know the recognition level will be much lower, so why retire?