Eta went on to make landfalls in Cuba and Florida, and caused $1.5 billion in damage in the U.S. Honduras suffered $6 billion in damage (24% of its $25 billion GDP), tying Eta with Hurricane Mitch of 1998 as the nation’s most expensive disaster on record. Eta killed at least 309 people, primarily in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Panama, according to insurance broker Aon. Moving very slowly at landfall, Eta lingered for three days over Central America and adjacent waters, dropping catastrophic amounts of rainfall in excess of 20 inches in some regions. Hurricane Eta became the deadliest Atlantic storm of 2020 after making landfall in northern Nicaragua on November 3 as a category 4 storm with 140 mph winds.
The most names retired in one season previously came in 2005, when five hurricanes names were retired. WMO retired three 2020 hurricane names: Laura, Eta, and Iota, along with Dorian from 2019, for which the announcement was not made last year because of the pandemic. Dorian (2019) and Laura, Eta, and Iota (2020) get their names retired A linear trend line is superimposed, showing that hurricane names are being retired about twice as often as back in the 1950s. Number of Atlantic hurricane names retired from 1953-2020, according to data from the National Hurricane Center. Names on the supplemental list will be retired and replaced when required. When a season exhausts names, a supplemental list of Atlantic tropical cyclone names from now on will be used instead of the Greek alphabet. There was no formal plan for retiring Greek names, and their future use of these names would be inappropriate. Impacts from Eta and Iota were severe enough that those names have been formally retired by the Hurricane Committee.In 2020, storms with very similar sounding names occurred simultaneously, leading to messaging challenges rather than streamlined and clear communication. Pronunciations of several of the Greek letters (Zeta, Eta, Theta) are similar and occur in succession.Confusion with some Greek alphabet names arose with translation into other languages.“The annual name list has been exhausted on two occasions during the past 15 years,” WMO said in its March 17 announcement, “and it is likely that this will occur again in the future.” It pointed to a number of shortcomings with the use of the Greek alphabet: The National Hurricane Center (NHC) had recommended this step back in 2005, after that year’s record-breaking hurricane season became the first to delve into the Greek alphabet having exhausted the 21 names from the regular season list. The WMO decision to stop using Greek names is much-needed. Sally, which caused $7.3 billion in damage to the southeastern U.S., is now the most expensive hurricane name to not be retired. Surprisingly, WMO opted not to retire the names of five storms that caused more than $2 billion in damage each – Zeta, Delta, Sally, and Isaias from 2020, and Imelda from 2019. WMO also permanently retired the names of three hurricanes from the 2020 season – Laura, Eta, and Iota – and one name from the 2019 season, Dorian. The Greek alphabet will no longer be used to name Atlantic hurricanes, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced.
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