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2020 has been a turbulent year – to say the least. Aside from the global pandemic, Britain has been hit with more than half a dozen storms, with the extreme weather conditions causing travel problems, flooding and infrastructure damage.
To handle the weather conditions, weather services across the UK and Ireland issue warnings for each storm that is due to hit the countries. These warnings come with names, a practice that the Met Office and Met Office Ireland started more than six years ago.
Every time a storm hits it is given a name, alternating between male and female. These names run throughout each storm season which starts in September each year and a new list of names is drawn up every 12 months.
For the 2019-2020 storm season, Irish and British authorities have also teamed up with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, the Dutch weather body. All three countries will use the same names for the storms.
The majority of the storms in a season happen at the start of the year, during winter months. However, August 2020 has seen two storms hit the UK and Ireland. These were Ellen on August 18 and Storm Francis that brought high winds and rain to the nations from August 24.
These August storms followed five storms in January and February. Storm Jorge was named by the Spanish weather authority and followed storm Dennis and storm Ciara, that both caused trouble earlier in February. Storm Brendan and storm Atiyah were the first storms of the 2019/2020 season.
But why does the Met Office name the storms that batter the UK? There's a simple reasoning behind it. The names are issued to humanise the weather events and make them more understandable to members of the public. Giving a storm a name means people can easily look up how it will impact them.
"The naming of storms using a single authoritative system should aid the communication of approaching severe weather through media partners and other government agencies," the Met Office says on its website. It continues to say that naming storms has increased the awareness of people in the UK.
How are storms named?
When the pilot scheme was announced in 2015, the offices used social media to collect a list of names. Overall, 10,000 potential names were submitted and the list of names was sorted by the organisation's staff members. In the summer of 2019, the Met Office and Met Éireann reopened their social media call for storm names and said that thousands of suggestions were received.
The names alternate between male and female and run from A-Z in the alphabet. However, in line with the US National Hurricane Centre, storms aren't called names beginning with Q, U, X, Y and Z due to the low number of names that begin with these letters. The 2019-2020 storm season has 21 names.
Documents from the Met Office, released under the Freedom of Information Act in March 2016, outline the internal procedures that are undertaken. When a potential storm is seen to be approaching the UK the meteorologists from the group assign it a rating of how dangerous it could be.
If this rating falls between the medium or severe categories, it is decided the weather system should be named. "Note that this means that all AMBER (ORANGE in the Irish system) and RED warning wind events will be named, along with some YELLOW warning events (i.e. those with a low or very low likelihood of 'medium' impacts)," the documents say.
Where storms have been named elsewhere in the world, the same name will be used and both of the weather organisations have to decide on a name.
At the time, the documents from the initial pilot said the scheme would focus on "large-scale, cyclonic windstorms" that could have a significant impact and move quickly towards lands. "We have not precisely defined these systems at present, as the assumption is that 'we'll know one when we see one'," the documents say.
The latest method of naming storms now takes into account rain, hail and not just wind. After the 2016-2017 storm season ended the Met decided to take the naming out of a pilot phase and continue to use it in the future.
What are 2019-2020's storm names?
The start of September 2019 marked the beginning of a new storm season and the Met Office and Met Eireann selected 21 names. The names are:
- Atiyah
- Brendan
- Ciara
- Dennis
- Ellen
- Francis
- Gerda
- Hugh
- Iris
- Jan
- Kitty
- Liam
- Maura
- Noah
- Olivia
- Piet
- Roisin
- Samir
- Tara
- Vince
- Willow
Excluded names
Documents from the Met Office, after its initial crowdsourced effort in 2015, detailed that no list of rejected names exists but said some were excluded in line with retired storm names from the Atlantic, North Pacific, Australian, South-West Indian regions.
"Other names were discounted because they were not proper names," the Met Office documents say. These included Apocalypse, Baldrick, Big Boss, Gnasher, Hot Brew, root ripper, Stormageddon, Ssswetcaroline, Vader, Voldermort and branch wobbler.
Other rejected names included: Hammer, Hades, Freebooter, Forkbeard, Megatron, Bluetooth, In A Teacup, Noddy and Poacher. The Met Office also said the names of retailers, such as B&Q and Asda, were excluded from the selection process.
Emails between staff at the Met Office and the Irish counterparts show staff saying "'Patrick' is a bit cliché-Irish" and saying names shouldn't begin with Q.
Ypdated August 25, 2020 13:45 BST: This article was published in February 2017 but has been updated to reflect more recent storms.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
