Last year's hurricane season is still breaking records by Kay Forster
The names of five hurricanes from last year’s record breaking season will never be used again. The World Meteorological Organisation’s international committee made the decision to officially retire the names of the most destructive hurricanes from last year - Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan, and Wilma.
Tropical storms and hurricanes have been given names since 1953, when it was thought that names would make it easier to track the storms, rather than geographical co-ordinates. Hurricanes are named alphabetically (excluding Q, U, X, Y and Z) in chronological order, alternating between male and female names. There are six lists of names which continue to rotate through the years, therefore the names used in 2005, will be used again in 2011.
The only time that there is a change in the list is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity. If that occurs, then the WMO committee excludes the name from the list and another name is selected to replace it.
Last season 21 storms were named, which is the highest number of storms ever to have formed in a season. This extremely busy hurricane season has now broken another record. Never before have five storm names retired in one year.
So far, since storms were first named, 67 names have been retired. The first to be dropped were Carol and Hazel in 1954.
This year’s retired names will be replaced by Don, Katia, Rina, Sean and Whitney.
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