Fiona, Ian retired from UN list of Atlantic hurricane names
Hurricane Fiona was the costliest weather event on record in Atlantic Canada, while Ian was the third most devastating in the US.
The death and devastation caused by hurricanes Fiona and Ian in North and Central America last year prompted the United Nations to remove those names from a rotating list of storm titles.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday that “Farrah” would replace “Fiona”, while “Idris” would replace “Ian”.
The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to November 30, and storms — known as tropical cyclones — are named to make them easier to spot in warning messages.
They are assigned alternating male and female names in alphabetical order. The names are reused every six years, but if a hurricane is particularly destructive, the name is retired.
A total of 96 names have been dropped from the hurricane list since the system was first introduced in 1953, according to the WMO.
Fiona was a large, powerful and destructive Category 4 Atlantic hurricane, impacting communities in the Antilles, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic before impacting Canada as a strong post-tropical cyclone in mid-September last year.
According to the UN organization, it was the costliest extreme weather on record in Atlantic Canada. It killed 29 people and caused more than $3 billion in damage there and in the Caribbean.
Ian arrived just days later, slamming into Cuba first before striking the US as a Category 4 hurricane, and was one of the strongest ever to hit that country.
It caused more than 150 deaths in the US, almost all of them in Florida, where it made landfall on September 28.
Ian, which caused more than $112 billion in damage, was the strongest hurricane in Florida history and the third costliest in the US.
Ian flattened entire neighborhoods and knocked out millions of people. Storm surges and immense downpours caused even inland neighborhoods to be flooded.
The WMO said there are dozens of named tropical cyclones each year worldwide, which have killed an average of 43 people over the past half-century and caused $78 million in losses each day.
And the situation is worsening due to climate change, with scientists saying the warming surface temperature of the Earth is amplifying the effects of extreme weather disasters.
But the UN agency said the death toll has fallen dramatically, thanks to improvements in forecasting, warnings and disaster risk reduction efforts coordinated by WMO’s Tropical Cyclone Program.
Overall, the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season produced 14 tropical cyclones, with winds of 63 km per hour (39 mi) or more, eight of which became hurricanes.
Fiona and Ian were the only ones to become major hurricanes, with winds exceeding 110 mph, according to year-end figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.