Tropical Storm Lee from 2011 (storms, America, most, South)

[roberthartge]

A lot of people are wondering why Irene got retired but not Lee.

I can think of a few reasons. Lee did do enough damage to get retired, but by the time it caused all the damage in the Northeast, it was a remnant low. It could be argied about Agnes in 1972 and Allison in 2001, but both did a lot of damage and were still named storms or entities when they did all their damage.

But, there are some other interesting facts about non-retired hurricanes that I feel should have been retired.

Hurricane Gracie in 1959 in the Carolinas. Immense damage, yet the name was not retired, it could still be used.

Tropical Storm Alberto in 1994-it did billions in flooding in the Southeast that year, yet not retired and it was up there with one of our costliest disasters.

Hurricane Alma in 1966, which hit the Gulf Coast, Central America, and the Southeast cost in early to mid June. It was an early cat 2 hurricane, but damage would be in the billions in 2012 dollars, yet it could still be used, although there is Alma as a listed name in the Pacific list of names (East Pacific).

Perhaps the most glaring example of a hurricane that should have been retired was Hurricane Kate from November of 1985, it came ashore on Florida's west Peninsula and southwest Georgia and caused over a billion dollars worth of damage, yet the name is still on our list of names.

My opinion is that Lee and all of these should have been retired.

I agree about Irene being retired. It was a terrible storm.

The Hurricane experts have a lot to consider when retiring a name, and that also depends on whether or not the country affected wants or requests the name to be retired.

Also, since America is a melting pot of names and nationalities now, I think we would have enough names for Q, U, X. Y, and Z to be used as additional names, should we get to the W storm and past like we did in 2005. Going to the Greek alphabet makes sense, but with more letters in use, should we get to W, we would have 5 more names befire that would be necessary.

And for that, we could choose a 2 year alternating list of names.

The Hurricane Center probably won't listen to me, but to me, it makes sense, to adopt this, times and who we are as American citizens of different nationalities now don't just span, English, French, and Spanish.

Robert Hartge

[NWNJ]

Also, most of Lee's damage was caused by the soil already being so saturated by Irene so really it just strengthens the case for Irene being retired (what case? it was definitely gonna get retired anyways ). Lee by itself didn't cause most of the damage.