ROCHESTER, N.Y. — When you see the timeline of an average season for tropical storms and hurricanes, you will notice the heart of the tropical season is approaching quickly. Considering it is the middle of August, the average number of storms goes up significantly leading into September.

Since 1950, individual names have been given to these storms as easy way to communicate and identify. Recently, Western New York has experienced the remnants of Hurricane Beryl and Hurricane Debby. These names are given out in advance by the World Meteorological Organization.

Each list contains 21 names and each list of names is rotated and reused every six years. But not every name gets recycled. Some of these names will be retired when they are classified as exceptionally deadly or damaging to infrastructure. On average, the WMO will retire one storm per year. The year with the most retired names was 2005 when five storms were retired.

An example how different a season can be was back in 2018 when Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael made landfall. Florence was not an exceptionally strong hurricane (as it was just a category one storm), but it produced a tremendous amount of rainfall. North and South Carolina measured well over 30 inches of rain which produced significant flooding.

The other side of the spectrum was Hurricane Michael which made landfall is a category five storm with winds of 160 mph. This was one of the strongest hurricanes to ever reach the United States and produced major damage to the panhandle of Florida. Both these storm names have been retired.

Looking ahead the next tropical system we are looking for Tropical Storm Ernesto. Will this name be retired? We will have to wait and see .