Florence and Michael to be retired as hurricane names
Florence and Michael won’t have another chance to damage the Atlantic Basin.
Florence and Michael -- the names of two destructive and deadly storms that hit Florida north to Virginia in 2018 -- have been retired by the World Meteorological Organization and NOAA’s National Hurricane Center.
Storm names are retired if they were deadly or destructive enough that the future use of the name would be considered insensitive.
In other circumstances, names are reused on a six-year cycle.
The replacement names for Florence and Michael will Francine and Milton, respectively. These names will first appear in the 2024 list of storm names.
OTHER RETIRED NAMES
In total, 88 names have been retired from the Atlantic basin list since 1953, when storms first started being named.
The 2005 hurricane season has five retired names, which is the highest number of retired names in one season.
TWO MASSIVE STORMS
Hurricane Florence, one of the deadliest and costliest hurricanes to ever hit the Carolinas, made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on September 14, 2018 and moved slowly inland with heavy rain, storm surge and record flooding. It caused at least 51 deaths and produced extensive flooding across much of the Carolinas and Virginia.
VIDEO: FLORENCE CREATES WIDESPREAD DESTRUCTION
The next month, Hurricane Michael made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, on October 10, with sustained winds of 155 mph. This was the third most intense hurricane to make landfall in the contiguous U.S. based on central pressure, and the fourth most intense based on wind speed. It was also the most intense hurricane on record to make landfall along the Florida Panhandle, where it caused widespread devastation and farther inland across Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. There were at least 45 fatalities blamed on the storm in the United States.
