20 March 2024

No storm names retired from 2023 Atlantic hurricane season

During its annual meeting, a "hurricane committee" within the World Meteorological Organization decided today that no names would be retired following the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.  This is the first season with no name retirements since 2014 (there were 17 from 2015-2022)!  So... how does this naming and retiring work?
Tropical cyclone tracks color-coded by intensity during the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.  Landfall locations are denoted by colored dots along the track.

The underlying reason for assigning names to tropical cyclones is that it makes communicating information about these huge and impactful storms simpler than referring to them solely by numbers or even by their coordinates on the globe.  A tropical cyclone is given a name once the sustained winds reach 39 mph (63 kph)... a tropical storm.

Tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean started receiving "human" names 71 years ago.  After a few years of trying the World War 2-era Phonetic alphabet for storm names, the 1953 list featured all-female "human" names: Alice, Barbara, Carol, Dolly, Edna, etc.

That remained the practice (with a few modifications to the lists in 1955, 1960, and 1971) until 1979 when the modern naming system was introduced in which six lists of alternating male/female names are reused every six years.  In other words, the list of names from 1979 was reused in 1985, 1991, 1997, and will be again in 2027.  That is why the 2023 list will next be used in 2029.  Those six lists only contain 21 names, as it was felt that there were not enough common names that begin with Q, U, X, Y, or Z to be sustainable.
Trivia 
Q: What was the first "male" name assigned to an Atlantic tropical cyclone?
A: It was Bob on July 10, 1979.
It did not take long to realize that some storms' names were particularly infamous and traumatic because of the death and destruction they caused, and it became the practice to retire those names and replace them with a different name of the same "gender" and letter (for example, Andrew was replaced by Alex and Irma was replaced by Idalia).

In 1954, three terrible hurricanes put this concept into practice: Carol, Edna, and Hazel.  Since then, and including 2022, there have been 96 names retired.  Since 1979, the names and retirees have been chosen by a committee within the World Meteorological Organization.  The committee is comprised of representatives from 28 countries that are affected by Atlantic hurricanes, so names tend to reflect a broad range of nationalities.  

The process of retiring a name is totally subjective; there are no minimum requirements for the number of fatalities or the economic losses to be met in order to be considered for retirement.  The country or countries affected simply nominate a storm name for retirement, make a case for it, and the committee votes.  It is tempting to construct some objective criteria, but consider the same hurricane hitting a rural stretch of the United States coastline versus passing over a small Caribbean island nation.  In the U.S., such a storm would likely not make a significant or lasting impact, but the small island could be effectively destroyed.

The following sequence of charts groups the retired names by various criteria.  The most retired letter is "I" (13 times) and it's not even close.  One might suspect that "I" storms tend to occur at the peak of the season when intense hurricanes are most common, but why wouldn't "H" and "J" be way up there too since they'd likely occur right around the same time?  Instead, "F" and "C" names are the most commonly retired after "I".  Climatology certainly plays some role, but luck takes care of the rest.


Since storms can affect multiple places over several days or even a week, it can sometimes be hard to assign a date to what event caused the storm name to be retired.  The next two charts simply assign the storm's month and Saffir-Simpson category based on when it achieved its peak intensity.  Not surprisingly, the peak month is September with nicely-distributed drop-offs in August and October, and then the storm that is most frequently retired reached Category 4 hurricane intensity.  Roughly 46% of all major hurricanes (Category 3-4-5) end up getting retired, and major hurricanes account for 85% of all retired names.



The next chart shows how many names were retired each year.  The most was 5 (in 2005), and 21 of the 71 years had no names retired.  However, I also added a trend line, and it's decidedly upward.  Since there are no objective criteria for retirement, we can't logically blame that trend on evolving criteria.  One contributing factor could be that, on average, hurricanes are gradually getting stronger and wetter due to climate change.  But primarily, there are simply more people and there is more stuff in harm's way now compared to several decades ago, so the same hurricane is more likely to cause more problems today.


There is really no meaningful trend, up or down, in the number of fatalities caused by storms that end up getting retired, but the median number is 65 people (as few as 1 and as many as ~12,000).  In terms of inflation-adjusted economic incurred losses, there is definitely an upward trend.  The hurricane seasons of 2017 and 2005 dominate the data, but even without them the trend is upward.  The median value of economic losses caused by retired storms is $6.5 billion 2023 USD (as low as $10m and as high as $196b).


Since the practice of retiring storm names is so subjective, the statistics presented here are not simply a reflection of what's happening in nature -- there is a significant human component to it.  And even the human component has components to it: 
  1. A storm can be less deadly if more people are able to evacuate or find a safe shelter
  2. A storm can be less costly if construction is more resilient to hurricane hazards
  3. With no objective guidelines, a couple dozen people nominate and vote on which names get retired.  There are several examples of past hurricanes that probably should have had their names retired, but didn't.
This year will be my 29th year of writing these blog posts.  That's actually impossible to believe, but I hope the information and updates have been useful and educational.  Thank you for your continued interest!

27 November 2023

Despite El Niño, hurricane season activity ends up well above average

This post marks the end of my 28th year writing these updates on tropical Atlantic activity.  During that time, I have written approximately 1410 posts spanning 481 tropical cyclones, 212 hurricanes, 97 major hurricanes, and 53 retired storm names. I know some of you reading this have been following along the entire time, but whether you've been reading these posts for 28 days or 28 years, I truly appreciate your continued interest!

Tracks of all tropical and subtropical cyclones during 2023. Each storm's peak intensity, lowest central pressure, and total Accumulated Cyclone Energy is provided in the table on the right.

The Atlantic hurricane season officially ends on Thursday, and it was a busy one.  Heading into the season, we were looking at an odd combination of two significant competing factors: a developing strong El Niño and record-breaking warm ocean temperatures.

With a lack of historical analogs from which we could gain insight, it was not obvious if one factor would dominate or if they would essentially balance each other out.  It turned out that the super-charged ocean was the dominant influence, and the seasonal activity ended up well above average.


There were 20 tropical storms, 7 of which became hurricanes, and 3 of which became major hurricanes (Category 3+ on the Saffir-Simpson Scale).  Using a climatology from 1991-2020, the average numbers of each are 14, 7, and 3.  The Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) ended up at about 119% of average... essentially identical to the 2008 and 2021 seasons by this metric.

Although there was a fairly long gap in activity as we headed into the heart of the season from July 26 to August 19, the Atlantic then had non-stop activity from August 20 through October 6... a remarkable 48 days spanning Emily through Philippe.

Next, I'll pick out some of the highlights from the season that stood out to me.

Bret and Cindy both formed in mid-June out near 40°W from African easterly waves.  That is quite unusual, and not something we would typically see until a couple months later.  In fact, having two simultaneous active "main development region" storms in June was unprecedented.  It seems to me that the exceptionally-warm ocean and lack of Saharan air layer plumes allowed these early MDR storms to form. [see "Bret and Cindy usher in a historic day for the tropical Atlantic"]

One of the three major hurricanes this season was Idalia.  It formed near the northeastern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula and then rapidly intensified to a Category 4 hurricane as it headed for Florida, then made landfall in the Big Bend region as a Category 3 hurricane just four days after it formed.  The area had not experienced a major hurricane landfall since 1896. [see "Idalia rapidly intensifies and makes landfall, Franklin weakening"]


Lee was the season's only Category 5 hurricane, and that intensity was fortunately achieved over the open ocean east of the Leeward Islands.  It intensified VERY rapidly... 85 mph in a day... going from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane.  Over the past 50 years in the Atlantic, only about 2.7% of tropical cyclones reach Category 5 intensity, so they are noteworthy.


Tropical Storm Philippe, which many of you might not even remember, was a real headache for forecasters.  Model guidance was consistently showing a north turn, which it did not make until several days later, and the intensity was curiously steady although the model guidance indicated periods of strengthening and weakening.  The average five-day track forecast error for Philippe was 2.4 times the average error at that lead time... pretty brutal.



Remarkably, there were only two hurricane landfalls anywhere in the Atlantic basin all season long: Category 3 Hurricane Idalia in Florida and Category 1 Hurricane Tammy in Barbuda.  However, there is another that deserves a mention: Lee made landfall in Nova Scotia in mid-September at Category 1 hurricane intensity, though it had technically transitioned to an extratropical cyclone by then.  That's just an academic difference... for practical purposes, it was a hurricane.

Another aspect of the season that stands out when you look at the track map at the top of this post is that there were no hurricanes in the Caribbean Sea, and with the exception of Idalia for 1.5 days, no hurricanes anywhere west of 72°W.  A weaker-than-normal Azores High helped to allow storms to turn north well before reaching the U.S. or even the Caribbean.

The season presented forecast challenges, primarily in track.  I singled out Philippe above, but there were other troublesome ones in the mix.  The two charts below show the preliminary verification statistics for the 2023 Atlantic season -- track on top then intensity below.  At each lead time, the difference between the NHC forecast and the observed value are averaged together to create these.  I also include NHC's average errors over the previous five seasons for context (the black dashed line).  As you see, the NHC's track forecast errors were higher than their own average at every lead time, but the intensity errors were lower.  Progress is not always linear.



Looking ahead to next season, the list of names is "List 4" and begins with Alberto, Beryl, and Chris.  This is the list that was first used in 1982 and repeated every six years since then.  The list has had six names retired from it over the years: Gilbert and Joan in 1988, Keith in 2000, Sandy in 2012, then Florence and Michael in 2018.  The 2024 version of the list features two new names: Francine and Milton which replace Florence and Michael.


01 November 2023

Formation chances drop, keeping the Atlantic quiet for a while longer

Of the two disturbances I mentioned in Monday's update, only the one in the Caribbean (Invest 97L) is still of interest. Today it's centered south of Haiti in the central Caribbean Sea and is expected to continue moving westward.


The National Hurricane Center is giving it a 20% probability of formation within the next two days and 40% within the next seven days.  However, on its current trajectory it will run into central America this weekend.

Models have become much less bullish on its development and intensification.  The European model ensemble barely finds anything trackable in the Caribbean, and the American model ensemble is generally very weak with just a small handful of stronger outliers.  With a much weaker system moving through the Caribbean, it's less likely to turn northward, so the tracks into Nicaragua look more reasonable now.


Strangely, it's not clear WHY this is failing to develop faster.  There are not obvious negative environmental factors in its way such as dry air or vertical shear, and the ocean under it is record-breakingly hot.  But the ample thunderstorm activity is just not consolidating around a center, so the pressure isn't falling, and the winds aren't increasing.  That can change quickly so we still have to be paying close attention, but it's at least off to a slow start.  Should this form and become a tropical storm, the next name on the list is Vince.

You may recall Hurricanes Eta and Iota in November 2020.  Both formed in the central Caribbean, and both made landfall as Category 4 hurricanes in Nicaragua just two weeks apart and a few miles apart.  Their tracks are shown below for reference, and as of now, there is absolutely no indication that this current system will intensify like they did.  But it's good to be reminded of what CAN happen in the western Caribbean in November and to watch things closely.


I will not have an opportunity to write another update until the 13th, so please keep an eye on NHC's website for the latest on any potential and active storms.