Met Office and Met Éireann, along with new partner KNMI, have revealed the official list of storm names for 2019-20.
The ‘Name Our Storms’ campaign was first launched in 2015, in a bid to help raise awareness of the potential impacts of severe weather in Britain and Ireland. Now in its fifth year, Met Office and Met Éireann are joined by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the Dutch national weather forecasting service.
In the summer Met Office and Met Éireann asked the public for storm name suggestions and after thousands of suggestions, they released the agreed list. They chose the names based on the most popular suggestions, and names that reflected the three nations diversity.
Evelyn Cusack, Head of Forecasting at Met Éireann, said:“The naming of storms by National Met Services as well as colour coding weather warnings provides a clear, authoritative and consistent message to the public and prompts people to take action to prevent harm to themselves or to their property.”
Naming storms actually dates back to the 1600s where there is record of tropical cyclones being named after saints. And in the 1950, the National Hurricane Centre started naming tropical cyclones too, and since the 1970s, have used alternating male and female names to identify storms in the Atlantic.
Giving names to storms nto only makes it easier for media reporting, but is more engaging to the public, raising awareness and potential dangers of severe weather.
The criteria for naming a storm is based on our National Severe Weather Warning System, which is based on the impacts a weather event may have, and the likelihood of those impacts happening. A storm will be named when it has the potential to cause an amber or red weather warning.
Names chosen for this year include Dennis, Noah, Maura, Róisín, Vince and Willow. You can see the full list of names from the Met Office and learn more about the ‘Name our Storms’ campaign here.