The World Meteorological Organization analyzed the list of names from the 2023 Atlantic and Pacific seasons, and it will surprise you to know that no names were retired from the Atlantic list.

The name lists are recycled every 6 years, and each ocean has its own set of lists. The Atlantic list contains names of Spanish, French, and English origin Spanish and English names origin are used for the Eastern Pacific Ocean to be familiar to population areas where storms mostly affect. Both lists alternate between female and male names.

From the 2023 Pacific season, the World Meteorological Organization just retired Dora and Otis. These two names will be replaced by Otilio and Debora.

We remember Dora because it was a long-lasting storm that formed in the eastern Pacific, but it also crossed the world, even crossing the International Dateline on August 12. Although this hurricane did not cause deaths or damage, as it stayed over water and weakened before reaching the western Pacific, it is indirectly linked to the catastrophic wildfires in Maui, Hawaii. Dora likely enhanced the low-level trade winds which fueled the flames raging across the Hawaiian region.

Otis was known for his rapid intensification and for causing catastrophic damage to the tourist town of Acapulco, Mexico, where 51 people died and estimated economic losses close to $3.2 billion were recorded.

It has been a decade since no names were retired from an Atlantic Hurricane Season list, and it is a welcomed change to a very active period of retiring names due to catastrophic and deadly storms. 2023 was still active, and although having an El Niño present should have calmed things down, the extensive expansion of the warm waters kept the storms forming. It was the season that kept on giving.

Unfortunately, we can count on higher odds of storms being retired each year, due to coastal population growth and the formation of stronger cyclones. Although the 2023 season was active with 20 named storms, most of them were fish storms, remaining over water. Nonetheless, the 2023 Atlantic season did have a major hurricane making landfall, Idalia, on Florida’s Big Bend on August 27. Read more about the 2023 season wrap-up here.

The last time the Atlantic had a season without any names retired was in 2014.