Dorian officially retired as a hurricane name

Dorian has been officially dropped from the rotating list of hurricane names.

The World Meteorological Organization hurricane committee held its annual discussion virtually last week and decided that name would be retired.

Meteorologist Bob Robichaud with the Canadian Hurricane Centre said in order for a name to be replaced, its associated hurricane needs to have had a significant impact on both lives and property.

“The country affected would actually make a proposition that that name be retired from the list and they would propose a substitute name and that's what happened last week,” he told NEWS 95.7 fill-in host Jordi Morgan.

“The Bahamas made that proposal, and of course it was backed up by us in Canada because it had impacts here as well.”

In 2019 as a Category 5, Dorian became the strongest hurricane on record to hit the northwestern Bahamas. 

Dorian made landfall on the Abaco Islands on Sept. 1 of that year with maximum sustained wind 295 km/h, killing dozens, leaving thousands homeless and causing catastrophic damage to infrastructure.

Six days later, it arrived in Nova Scotia.

The storm made landfall in Sambro Creek near Crystal Crescent Beach at around 7 p.m. on Sept. 7, 2019 as a hurricane-strength post-tropical cyclone.

Dorian ended up downing large trees throughout the Halifax Regional Municipality, damaging the Halifax waterfront, ripping a roof from a south end apartment building, toppling a construction crane, knocking out power to over 400,000 Nova Scotia Power customers, and basically blowing away anything not tied down.

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), the storm caused $62.2 million in total insured damage to our province.

Dorian's retirement was delayed a year as 2020's meeting was put on hold for the pandemic. In 2025, the name will be replaced by Dexter.

“We have six lists that we rotate every six years,” Robichaud explained. “Those names are made up of both female and male and also English, French and Spanish names.”

2020's Hurricane Laura has also been dropped. The Category 4 hurricane was responsible for 47 direct deaths in the United States and Hispaniola, and more than $19 billion in damage. When 2026 rolls around, the L storm will be Leah.

The annual Atlantic hurricane list runs from A to Z, but skips over the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z, for a total of 21 names.

Last year was the most active Atlantic hurricane season on record, and for only the second time, meteorologists ran of official names and had to resort to using the Greek alphabet. 

However, the World Meteorological Organization also decided to no longer use Greek letters going forward.

The organization concluded having similar sounding storms like Zeta, Eta and Theta developing one after the other caused confusion.

“And specifically with Zeta, which starts with a Z, a lot of people were asking is this the last letter of the Greek Alphabet? What happens if we have more storms after Z, but Zeta was not the last name in the list,” Robichaud explained.

“So it caused some confusion that takes away from the message of the actual weather conditions and the impacts.”

Instead, a supplemental list of A-Z names has been created to use in future years when we cycle through all the names during a very active hurricane season.