NOAA reported this morning (link) that the World Meteorological Organization has retired the storm names “Matthew” and “Otto” from their list of storm names. You probably remember the impacts of Matthew, which hit the East Coast and caused incredible damage to eastern North Carolina as well as brought rain to the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina and caused significant beach erosion along the east coast of Florida. Otto was a late-season tropical cyclone, cutting a swath through the southwestern Caribbean Sea beginning on Nov. 20. It intensified rapidly to a category 3 hurricane before making landfall in southern Nicaragua. It crossed from the Atlantic and into the eastern Pacific Ocean, rare for a tropical cyclone.
The story says that the name Matthew will be replaced by Martin and Otto by Owen when this year’s list is reused n 2022. You can find the full list of names at https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml.
