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As we watch whether the current Tropical Storm Danny will become a hurricane, and whether it will move close enough to affect the coast from the Carolinas to Maine, you may be scratching your head thinking that you have heard about a Hurricane Danny in the past.

Indeed, there have been two Hurricane Dannys that made landfall in the United States, each of which were Category 1 storms coming ashore in the north-central Gulf of Mexico before the remnants crossed the Southeast. The August 1985 Hurricane Danny came ashore in rural southwest Louisiana with 90 mph winds, but its main effects were inland flooding due to heavy rain and a prolific outbreak of tornadoes in the Southeast, including 34 in Alabama alone. Three people died from Danny's effects. More detailed National Hurricane Center information related to Danny 1985 is linked here. (Gotta love those 1980s-era typewritten reports!)

The July 1997 Hurricane Danny, with a very small area of hurricane-force winds around its eye, crossed the Mississippi River delta of Louisiana before making a second somewhat stronger landfall near Dauphin Island/Fort Morgan, Ala.  The slow-moving storm dumped more than 30 inches of rain in parts of south Alabama, and then spread heavy rain and a smattering of tornadoes northeastward through the Carolinas into the Tidewater area of Virginia. A total of 4 people were killed. Danny 1997 did a very unusual thing, re-intensifying into a tropical storm over southeast Virginia before it re-emerged into the Atlantic. A more detailed National Hurricane Center synopsis of Danny 1997 is linked here.

There were also Dannys in 1991 and 2003 that remained over open water. You see a pattern here: Every 6 years, there is a new Danny. That's because the National Hurricane Center's storm name lists are rotated every 6 years. Names are removed only if the World Meteorological Organization determines that a storm had such a major impact that no other storm should carry that name, for at least 10 years (though effectively, the retirement has been permanent). It's a Hall of Fame of sorts, or rather, a Hall of Infamy. Here is a listing of retired storm names.

Danny, neither in 1985 nor in 1997, has been deemed worthy of name retirement. We'll see if it does something in the next days to get taken off the list. Othewise, it will be re-appear for the fourth named storm of the 2015 Atlantic tropical season.