Talk:Hurricane Retirement/@comment-27225426-20171017171226/@comment-33388760-20171017232353

Gert killed 116 throughout Central Ameria, only 45 of them being in Mexico.

Bertha caused only $335 million in damage ($270 million on the mainland US) and caused only 12 deaths throughout its path.

Danny only caused $100 million in damage and killed 9 people.

Leslie wasn't even tropical when it hit Florida and Florida wouldn't ask for its retirement since Irene (1999) wasn't retired and only caused $800 million compared to the $950 Leslie caused.

Dolly wasn't that bad by 2008 standards for either Mexico or Texas. $1.35 billion in damage and 22 deaths. Same with Alex. That only caused $1.5 billion in damage and 12 direct deaths in Mexico. The rest came from outside of Central America. Let me put this another way. If a hurricane identical to Roxanne (1995) hit between 2008 and 2010, there would be $4-5 in damage, something neither Dolly or Alex would live up to.

Fay (2008) also caused less than a billion to Florida and after the impacts it faced from the 2004 and 2005 seasons, Fay paled in comparison to the likes of Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne, Wilma, and to a lesser extent Dennis (which I believe was retired because of Cuba).

Matthew (2010) might have caused 140 deaths in Central America but the maximum death toll in any Central American country was 70 in Nicaragua and they've seen worse in Joan and Mitch and possibly even Cesar.

Lee and Isaac are in similar situations. They both caused $1.5-2.0 billion in damage to the USA but they each killed less than 20 people. Also, they were both overshadowed by much more destructive storms: Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012 caused $1.6 billion in damage and less than 20 deaths. Neither would fly for retirement by 2011-2012 standards for the U.S.

Alberto caused $1 billion in damage in 1994 dollars (note that inflation, population, and wealth would increase this value to nearly $3 billion in 2017), with $750 million in Georgia alone where it killed 32 people. I defend Alberto because it was the first of its kind - the first billion-dollar tropical storm.

Now to mention it, I have second thoughts about Bonnie, Gonzalo, and Earl. Bonnie was a billion-dollar storm (1998 dollars) but only killed 5 people, It's up there with the likes of Dolly, Lee, Isaac in that while it was destructive, it paled in comparison to other destructive storms that same year. Gonzalo did $300 million in damage to Bermuda but Fabian set the gold standard there, which would do $650 million in 2014. And Earl, don't get me wrong it was bad but was not worse than Diana (1990) in terms of damage and death toll. Stan (2005) killed as many people in Mexico as Earl but did far more economic damage ($100 million vs. $2.5 billion - note $2.5. billion in the US is not the same as $2.5 billion in other countries).

The reason I defend the likes of Keith, Iris, Fabian, Juan, Paloma, Igor, Tomas, Erika, etc. for their retirement is that none of those places prior to them had a definite standard for what would be retirement-worthy. They set the standard for Belize, Bermuda, Canada, Cayman Islands, St. Lucia, and Dominica for what would they consider to be the worst of the worst.