These hurricanes have been so disastrous there names are being retired

Hurricanes Helene, Milton and Beryl were so nasty last year that their names are being retired.

These storms caused more than 300 deaths and inflicted more than $119 billion in damage, prompting the World Meterological Organization (WMO) to remove them from the six-year rotating list of Atlantic storm names.

Replacing them are Brianna, Holly, and Miguel, which will be used in future storm seasons.

The practice of retiring names for particularly destructive storms is standard procedure for the WMO, and the list of retired names is now nearing 100.

Helene was by far the deadliest and most expensive of the trio with its flooding claiming 249 lives, the most in the United States since 2005’s Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish on 29 August, 2005. The Category 5 storm killed nearly 1,400 people.

It also was the seventh most expensive storm in American history, with damages reaching $78.7 billion, according to the National Hurricane Center. While it came out of the Gulf and hit Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4, most of the deaths and damage were inland in North Carolina and South Carolina.

The devastation was especially bad in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where at least 57 people died in and around Asheville, North Carolina, a tourism haven known for its art galleries, breweries and outdoor activities.

Milton came on the heels of Helene, bringing high winds, flooding and tornadoes to cause $34.3 billion in damage, almost all of it in Florida.

Beryl, which in June because the earliest Category 5 storm to form in a season, killed 68 people in the United States, Grenada, Venezuela, Jamaica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

In the Pacific region, the name Jack is replacing John, a Category 3 storm that killed 29 people in Mexico.

Source: independent.co.uk