Cleveland Kent Evans wrote:wwizard wrote:Before 2000, only 2 "I" storms had ever been retired. Ione-'55, Inez-'66. Since 2000, Ida is sure to be the 10th retired "I" name. Definitely has a lot to do with the "I" storm popping up in peak season now.
The "A" storms for example, had more storms retired before 2000 because for the most part the 1st storm of the year wasn't forming until August. Now, we've had 7 years in a row where the "A" storm has formed before June. In fact, the last "A" storm to be retired was Allison in 2001.
We're just in a lot more active period now where the storms really don't start getting nasty until 8, 9, 10 names down the list. Of course, that doesn't explain why "H" or "J" hasn't seen that kind of uptick in retired storms like "I" has. Got no answer for that other than just coincidence. There's been 7 "A" storms and 9 "C" storms that have been retired, but only 3 "B" storms. "M" has more retired names (6) than "J" does (5) and "M" didn't have it's 1st retired name until 1995. No rhyme nor reason to it.
I believe another factor in making A and C a bit less likey to be retired and I more likely than before is that before 2002 subtropical storms were not given names even if they passed the threshold for wind speed. So in addition to the seasons being more active, that tends to push names for really bad storms down the alphabet.
I am not a mathematician, but I think the fact that I has had so many more retirements the last two decades than H and J could statistically just be a matter of chance. We are still dealing with a total data set that's small enough that I'm not sure the difference would be statistically significant.
There haven't actually been a lot of subtropical storms (before or after) that have failed to transition--only Nicole in 2004, an unnamed (post-analysis) system in 2005, Andrea in 2007, another post-analysis system in 2013, Andrea/Rebekah in 2019, and Alpha last year--in fact there have still been several systems that met all the criteria and were never classified. So it hasn't really had much impact on the whole. Though ironically two of the three retired names that missed out were C names--Dean and Felix would've been Chantal and Erin in 2007, and Dorian would've been whatever had been picked for Chantal's replacement.
On an interesting note with the I names, I've gone through the full Atlantic set of names that have ever been on the list, and only Inga, Ilsa, Ilene, Imogene, Ivy remain from those that are neither in circulation nor retired.
