No storm named Fiona will ever strike Canada’s Atlantic—or anywhere else in the Atlantic Ocean—again.
The World Meteorological Organization has removed the names Fiona and Ian from its list of tropical storm names, citing the damage caused by hurricanes with those names in 2022.
Hurricane names in the Atlantic region are used on a six-year rotation, so Fiona and Ian should be used next in 2028.
“Farrah will be used to replace Fiona in the naming lists, while Idris will replace Ian,” the World Meteorological Organization said in a press release on Wednesday.
“Fiona was a large and powerful hurricane that impacted communities in the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos Islands,” the agency said. “It then moved north across the western Atlantic and struck Canada in September 2022 as a powerful post-tropical cyclone, causing significant damage and loss of life along the way.”
Fiona left behind devastated forests, mass power outages and damaged homes in many parts of Atlantic Canada. The hardest-hit areas were Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton and southwestern Newfoundland.
At least 25 lives were lost as the storm system rolled up from the Caribbean, including a woman who was washed into the sea in Port aux Basques, NL, as Fiona ripped houses from their foundations.
The weather organization called Fiona “the costliest extreme weather event on record in Atlantic Canada.”
A report released in December by Christian Aid, a UK-based charity, identified Hurricane Fiona as one of the 10 costliest climate disasters of 2022.
Alongside the deaths, the charity said Fiona had displaced 13,000 people and caused nearly Cdn4 billion in damage.
Hurricane Ian struck western Cuba before making landfall in southwest Florida at Category 4 strength.
“Ian caused a devastating storm surge in Southwest Florida and is responsible for over 150 direct and indirect deaths and over $112 billion in damage in the United States, making it the costliest hurricane in Florida history and the third costliest in the United States.” States makes.” This was announced by the World Meteorological Organization.
With Fiona and Ian, 96 names have been removed from the Atlantic Basin list since 1953 when storms began naming.
Storms are named in the order in which they form during the Atlantic hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 through November 30.
For 2023 the names are Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harold, Idalia, Jose, Katia, Lee, Margot, Nigel, Ophelia, Philippe, Rina, Sean, Tammy, Vince, Whitney. Of these, Harold, Idalia, Margot, and Nigel are new names, replacing the retired 2017 Storm names Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Nate.
