However, if a particular storm brings significant amounts of death and/or destruction, the organization removes that name for future use.
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Erika was a tropical storm that caused casualties in the Caribbean.
After being used for the last time in 2015, Erika and Joaquin will no longer be used in the Atlantic basin, while Patricia was crossed off the list in the East Pacific.
The storm at one point posed a threat to Brevard but weakened and eventually dissipated around Hispanola and Cuba. It took the lives of 34 people, including 33 crew members of the cargo ship El Faro which sank northeast of Crooked Island in the Bahamas.
Instead of Erika, Elsa will become the “E” name in 2021, Julian, “J”, and Pamela, “P”.
The naming list is recycled every six years for the respective basins.
In a press release, the organization said storm’s names will be retired if it “was so deadly or costly that the future use of the name would be insensitive”. The storm caused more than $16 million worth of crop damage in Puerto Rico. The Pacific Ocean hurricane was well beyond the magnitude of a Category 5 storm. In Haiti, one person died due to a mud slide after Erika had dissipated as a tropical cyclone. That made it the strongest hurricane to hit the Bahamas during the month of October since 1886.
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Hurricane Joaquin killed almost 3 dozen people in the Bahamas in October, 2015, as it battered some of the islands. Tropical storm Erika, which formed in late August, never crossed the wind-speed threshold to assume full hurricane status, but was still devastating. NOAA says some 10,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by the storm, and 100,000 acres of farmland were inundated.
