It's been six seasons since a strong, incredibly slow-moving Category 2 hurricane crawled ashore in Gulf Shores.

Now, there is the potential for a storm of the same name to make the kind of waves we don't want to see in south Alabama.

The National Hurricane Center, which is responsible for the Atlantic Basin, uses six lists to name a disturbance that intensifies into a tropical storm. The separate set is used each year and rotates back to the first one once all are used. That means the list used for the 2020 hurricane season, which included Hurricane Sally, is the one being used this year.

Hurricane Sally made landfall in Gulf Shores at 5 a.m. on Sept. 16, 2020, as a strong Category 2 storm with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph. While its track was always aimed at the Gulf Coast, a flair of erraticism suddenly shifted its trajectory from making landfall in Louisiana as a Category 1 storm to its stronger, more eastward arrival point.

"This increase in intensity over land is uncommon, as storms typically tend to decelerate as they come ashore. However, Grant Brown, the director of recreation and cultural affairs in the city's mayoral office, noted a trend over the past couple of years in which storms have hit the coast and maintained or even gained strength in the shallow, warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico," according to the Rural Health Information Hub (RHI), which tracked the impacts of the storm amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

It's extremely slow pace prolonged and exacerbated local impacts; according to the National Weather Service's (NWS) report on the storm, it was moving at less than 5 mph at the time of landfall, resulting in a long duration of tropical storm and hurricane force winds, storm surge and torrential rainfall.

A storm's name can be retired if it is "so deadly or costly that the future use of its name for a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity," according to NWS.

If that occurs, the World Meteorological Organization committee votes to replaces the name with another and strikes the "offending name" from the list.

The Alabama Gulf Coast's two other hurricanes of lore, Frederic in 1979 and Ivan in 2004, which was previously the most recent named storm to make landfall on the Alabama Gulf Coast, are both retired. The three that were retired from Sally's year are Laura, Eta and Iota.

In 2020, there were so many named storms that NWS had to start using the Greek alphabet after going through the complete list of rotating names. Now, there is an alternate name list to be used in such a busy season rather than Greek letters.

The first time the Greek alphabet was used was in 2005, a record-breaking year with several devastating hurricanes including Katrina, Rita and Wilma, whose names were all retired. Six names from the Greek alphabet were used in 2005. In 2020, a new record-breaking year, 30 storms were named of which nine used Greek letters.

Hurricane Sally was responsible for four direct fatalities, including one in the Wolf Bay area of Baldwin County, two in Escambia County, Florida, and one near Atlanta, Georgia. There were also five indirect fatalities, including one in Foley, one in Baldwin County, one in Pensacola and two in Georgia.

The storm dropped 15-30 inches of rain across Baldwin County into the western Florida Panhandle. According to NWS, thousands of water rescues were conducted due to major river and flash flooding.

Along the coast, wind damage was extensive due to eyewall exposure over several hours. Media reports indicate that at least 275,000 customers lost power in Alabama, including almost all of Baldwin County and 85% of Escambia County.

"The pecan farms of Baldwin County took a major hit with well over 1,000 pecan trees downed throughout the county," NWS states in its storm report.

The Alabama Forestry Commission estimates that 2,440 forested acres were damaged with 79,175 tons of timber destroyed at a value of $1.6 million. Most of this occurred in Baldwin County.

According to RHI and NWS, Sally caused a national total of $7.3 billion in damage.

For context, though they should not be compared apples to apples because of inflation and population changes over time, Hurricane Ivan in 2004, which made landfall just west of Gulf Shores, also on Sept. 16, came ashore as a Category 3 storm and caused eight deaths and $14 billion in damage.