Every year the hurricane committee at the World Meteorological Organization studies the tropical storms from the previous season and decides if any of the storms were noteworthy enough to have their names retired. Hurricanes Hazel and Hugo are both retired…. there will never be another storm with the name Hugo. More recently, Hurricanes Sandy and Irene both had their names retired. Both of those storms brushed by the Grand Strand, but they were retired because of significant damage further north.

The list of names retired from the 2015 season was released today, and it includes two storms… Tropical Storm Erika, and Hurricane Joaquin. These two names will never be used again, and have been replaced with “Elsa” and “Julian” when the list will be used again in 2021. There are six lists of names for Atlantic tropical storms on a rotation, so last year’s names will be used again in six years.

Dennis Feltgen with NOAA writes: “Erika was a tropical storm whose torrential rains inflicted significant casualties and damage on the Caribbean island of Dominica. More than a foot of rain fell there and the storm was directly responsible for 30 deaths. In Haiti, one person died due to a mud slide after Erika had dissipated as a tropical cyclone.”

“Joaquin was a category 4 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale), whose strong winds and storm surge devastated Crooked Island, Acklins, Long Island, Rum Cay, and San Salvador in the central and southeastern Bahamas in October 2015. Joaquin took the lives of 34 people—all at sea—including the 33 crewmembers of the cargo ship El Faro, which sank during the storm northeast of Crooked Island. Joaquin is the strongest October hurricane known to have affected the Bahamas since 1866.” – Dennis Fletgen, NOAA

Erika and Joaquin are the 79th and 80th Atlantic storms to have their names retired since 1954. In 2015, Hurricane Patricia in the eastern Pacific was also retired.