Ok so how do storms actually get their names?

The Met Office has released a red weather warning for certain parts of the UK as Storm Eunice hits. People of south west England, London, east England and south Wales have all been advised to stay inside unless absolutely necessary. Schools, train services and certain attractions are all closing for the day and the BBC has predicted this could be the worst storm in three decades. Cheers Eunice. So how exactly are storms given their names? And why was Eunice chosen to represent the worst storm in years?

This is everything you need to know about who decides storm names and why:

Why are storms given names in the first place?

Naming storms is actually quite a recent thing in the UK, with the Met Office first naming a storm in 2015. Storms are given names in order to warn people of the severity of the weather situation.

Basically if you hear a storm with a name you need to take it seriously.

Who names the storm?

You often hear rumours of storms being named after people’s exes and in fairness this could be slightly true.

Every year the Met Office requests the public to send in name suggestions and from this they create a new list. Last year over 10,000 names were suggested and they are then chosen by the Met Éireann, the Met Office and KNMI (which is the Dutch weather forecast system) in order to reflect the diversity of Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands.

The names are in alphabetical order and they flip between male and female. The new list begins in September of each year and ends in August of the following year to coincide with the autumn season where there is more potential for storms.

Are there any banned names?

There are no storms to be named which start with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z. The reason for this is so they stay in line with US National Hurricane Centre naming conventions. So if you’re called Zara there will never a storm named after you.

What other storm names are there this year?

The Met office has published their list of names for the upcoming year.

So far we’ve had Arwen, Barra, Corrie, Dudley and now we’re on Eunice. The next storm will be called Franklin.

These are the rest of the names for the year: Gladys, Herman, Imani, Jack, Kim, Logan, Méabh, Nasim, Olwen, Pól, Ruby, Seán, Tineke, Vergil and Willemien.

Featured image credit via Marcus Woodbridge on Unsplash

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