Did You Know?
- Winter Storm Names
Background
When storms with winds over 40mph are forecast, the UK Meteorological Office (now known as the "Met Office")is giving them each one a name, each year's list starting in November. For a storm to be named, it must be forecast to have a medium or high impact from strong winds in the UK. It is claimed that this is being done so that "the public will be better placed to keep themselves, their property and businesses safe." Names help raise awareness of severe weather before it strikes and to ensure greater safety of the public.
Attaching a name to a weather event has been found to help people track its progress, to allow people to prepare for and avoid danger and to make it easier to reference on social media.
Storms are given names when they are deemed to have the potential to cause 'medium' or 'high' wind impacts on the UK and/or Ireland.
To ensure they are in line with the US National Hurricane Centre naming conventions, the UK and Irish are not going to include names which begin with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z. This will maintain consistency for official storm naming in the North Atlantic.
There is more information on at the Met Office Storm Centre. That page provides notes on all the storms as the season progresses.
Since many of the storms reach the UK from the North Atlantic, such information is of particular interest to this people living in Scotland - especially the north and west coast and Western Isles.
2015 - 2016
The first named storm was "Abigail" on 10 November 2015. The names allocated for 2015/2016 the rest of the winter were: Abigail, Barney, Clodagh, Desmond, Eva, Frank, Gertrude, Henry, Imogen, Jake, Katie, Lawrence, Mary, Nigel, Orla, Phil, Rhonda, Steve, Tegan, Vernon, Wendy.
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