Hurricane Idalia: about the name

In case you are struggling to say Idalia (either aloud or in your head), the NOAA Atlantic basin storm name list helpfully provides a pronunciation guide: Idalia (ee-DAL-ya).

I’m using dahlia (DA(H)L-ya) as my hint.

In Greek mythology, Idalia is linked to Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love, probably because the city of Idalion or Idalium “was a center of her cult.”

Since 1953, we have given storms human names, which makes identifying them more convenient.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report projects that the global proportion of tropical cyclones that reach very intense (category 4-5) levels, along with their peak winds and rainfall rates, are expected to increase with climate warming.

The World Meteorological Organization retires names associated with storms that are “so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity.”

Here are the 13 retired “I” names. Note that only two happened in the first 50 years of naming storms; 11 have occurred in the past 22 years.

1. Ione (Sept. 10-21, 1955)
2. Inez (Sept. 21-Oct. 11, 1966)
3. Iris (Oct. 4-9, 2001)
4. Isidore (Sept. 14-27, 2002)
5. Isabel (Sept. 6-20, 2003)
6. Ivan (Sept. 2-24, 2004)
7. Ike (Sept. 1-15, 2008)
8. Igor (Sept. 8-23, 2010)
9. Irene (Aug. 20-28, 2011)
10. Ingrid (Sept. 12-17, 2013)
11. Irma (Aug. 30-Sept. 12, 2017)
12. Ida (Aug. 26-Sept. 2, 2021)
13. Ian (Sept. 23-30, 2022)

Also, see

• Florida evacuation orders in prep for Hurricane Idalia
• Georgia and South Carolina under state of emergency: governors
• West coast of Florida braces for Hurricane Idalia (updated)

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