Ida retired from Hurricane storm list

The World Meteorological Organization has retired Ida from the rotating lists of storm names for the Atlantic Hurricane Basin.

Ida caused devastation in Cuba, Venezuela and Louisiana during the 2021 hurricane season.

Lists of storm names are repeated every six years, but a storm name is removed from the lists if it was so deadly or costly that the future use of its name for a different storm would be considered inappropriate and insensitive.

Ida first originated in the eastern Caribbean as a tropical wave on 23 Aug., before making its way through the central Caribbean where it developed into a Category 1 hurricane some 50 miles off Grand Cayman.

On 29 Aug., Ida made landfall in the southern US, where it lashed states like Louisiana with Category 4 winds of 175mph, an average of 10 inches of rainfall, storm surges of up to 12 feet, and two tornadoes. The WMO estimates that Ida caused 55 direct and 32 indirect fatalities, and US$75 billion worth of damages.

The name Ida will be replaced by Imani.

“Imani will instead be used in the lists of names, which are overseen by WMO to help in the communication of storm warnings and to alert people about potentially life-threatening risks,” wrote the WMO in a statement released on its website.

The WMO first began retiring storm names from the Atlantic Hurricane basin in 1953. Ida is the 94th name to be retired. In 2005, Cayman Islands National Weather Service requested that the name Ivan be retired due to the wide-scale destruction caused by the massive Category 5 storm.

Ida also impacted Cayman, when on 27 Aug. last year, it veered east of Grand Cayman, leaving rough seas, strong winds, heavy rains and significant power outages in its wake.

The WMO’s decision to retire Ida from its storm names comes just one month shy of the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season on 1 June. Each year the Atlantic hurricane season runs through to 30 Nov.

In its pre-season forecast, Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project called for an above-average season. CSU called for 19 named storms and nine hurricanes, four of which are expected to strengthen to major hurricane strengthen of Category 3, 4 or 5.