‘Ida’ is officially retired as a hurricane name. It left a legacy of destruction in Philly and elsewhere.
Ida was one of several tropical storms affecting the Philly region whose names have been retired, a distinction reserved for the very worst of them.
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Whatever else might happen during the 2022 tropical storm season, it is a certainty that the Atlantic Basin will not experience another Hurricane Ida.
The World Meteorological Organization decreed Wednesday “Ida” would be retired from the list of hurricane names, which are recycled every six years, a distinction reserved for the especially destructive tropical storms, the likes of Katrina, in 2005; Andrew, in 1992; and Sandy, in 2012.
Ida, which smashed into the Louisiana coast on Aug. 29 with 150-mph winds, gained a second wind as a devastating rainstorm in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where it was blamed for killing at least 49 people. In the Philly region it spawned tornadoes and triggered cosmic flooding along the Schuylkill.
» READ MORE: Here's a timeline of Ida's destruction
Ida joins an impressive roll call of storms that have affected the Philadelphia region and eventually had their names retired.
They include:
Hazel, October 1954: Philadelphia officially measured sustained winds of 73 mph, and a gust of 94 mph.
Donna, September 1960: The 4.60 inches of rain from Donna set a daily record, and sustained winds reached 49 mph.
Agnes, June 1972: Blamed for 117 deaths from North Carolina to New York, Agnes’ rains floated caskets out of their graves in upstate Pennsylvania.
Floyd, September 1999: More than a foot of rain descended upon northern Delaware and caused widespread flooding throughout the region. It did end a horrific drought.
Irene, August 2011: The Delaware River at Trenton rose about 22 feet, the last time it crested above flood stage.
Sandy, October 2012: A living hell for Long Beach Island, and still the reigning champ for power outages in the Philadelphia region. In all, it was blamed for 72 deaths.
Why retire a name?
According to the National Hurricane Center, a name is retired “if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for obvious reasons of sensitivity.”
That decision is in the hands of the World Meteorological Organization, which also is responsible for the naming protocols.
» READ MORE: Hurricane Laura was blamed for killing at least 14
For hurricane trivia buffs: The 2020 season marked the first time that two non-names were retired — Eta and Iota, along with Laura. That year so many storms formed that they exhausted the alphabet and the later storms were identified by Greek letters.
Why bother with names at all?
As the hurricane center explains, using names reduces confusion when two or more tropical storms are churning at the same time.
Besides, names are way more user-friendly than identifying storms by longitude-latitude coordinates.
» READ MORE: Another busy hurricane season expected
Naming has quite an old tradition. For hundreds of years, in the West Indies hurricanes were named for saints’ days on which they coincided.
The United States started using female names in 1953, ditching the clunky system based on the phonetic alphabet.
The practice of using only women’s names ended in 1978.