Hurricane names 'Florence' and 'Michael' retired by the World Meteorological Organization

The World Meteorological Organization announced Wednesday that hurricane names 'Florence' and 'Michael' would be retired.

Both storms caused extensive fatalities and damage from Florida north to Virginia last year.

They have now been retired by the World Meteorological Organization's Region IV Hurricane Committee, which includes NOAA's National Hurricane Center.

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The National Hurricane Center says that storm names are retired if they were so deadly or destructive that the future use of the name would be insensitive. Otherwise, names are reused on a six-year cycle.

The committee has selected the replacement names for Florence and Michael as Francine and Milton, respectively. These names will first appear in the 2024 list of storm names.

In addition to these two, 86 names have been retired from the Atlantic basin list since 1953, when storms began to be named. The 2005 hurricane season has the most retired names - five - for one season.

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