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After a deadly and destructive 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced that it is retiring Matthew and Otto from the rotating list of storm names.

Decision made to retire two hurricanes names, here's why


Leeanna McLean
Digital Reporter

Wednesday, March 29, 2017, 1:55 PM - After a deadly and destructive 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has announced that it is retiring Matthew and Otto from the rotating list of storm names.

Both hurricanes developed late in the season and impacted millions of people across the Caribbean and U.S., leaving behind widespread damage.

They are the 81st and 82nd names to be removed from the Atlantic list. In 2015 the decision was also made to remove Isis from the list of names. Isis, the name of an Egyptian goddess, was supposed to be the name of the ninth tropical storm or hurricane to form in the eastern Pacific in 2016, but The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has preemptively removed it.

"Storm names are retired if they were so deadly or destructive that the future use of the name would be insensitive," a WMO press release states.


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Matthew was upgraded to a Category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale on Sept. 30., packing winds of 230+ km/h. It made landfall along the coast of southwestern Haiti, extreme eastern Cuba, western Grand Bahama Island and central South Carolina, according to the WMO.

Over a thousand deaths were reported in Haiti alone, making it the deadliest Atlantic storm since Hurricane Stan in 2005.

After wreaking havoc on the Caribbean, Matthew made its way up the U.S. Southeast coast where it slammed the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida with damaging winds and catastrophic flooding. Nearly 1.5 million people lost power at the height of the storm.

Matthew caused an estimated $10 billion in total U.S. property losses, about $5 billion of which were insured, according to an estimate by Goldman Sachs.

In North Carolina, 35 deaths were reported due to devastating floods. The storm left 7,000 homes completely destroyed.

Meanwhile, Otto was the strongest cyclone to form late in the season since Olga in 2007. It rapidly intensified to a Category 3 storm before making landfall north of the town of San Juan de Nicaragua in southern Nicaragua on Nov. 30.

Otto battered the country and Costa Rica with torrential rains, forcing thousands of evacuations and killing at least 18 people across Central America.

"It crossed from the Atlantic and into the eastern Pacific Ocean, rare for a tropical cyclone, when it moved across southern Nicaragua and northern Costa Rica and emerged over the far eastern North Pacific as a tropical storm," says the WMO.

The names Matthew and Otto will be replaced with Martin and Owen when the 2016 lists are used again in 2022.

SOURCE: WMO

WATCH BELOW: First views of Hurricane Matthew impacting Haiti

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