Winter storm naming in the United Kingdom and Ireland


The United Kingdom's Met Office, in collaboration with its Irish counterpart Met Éireann and, since 2019, its Dutch counterpart the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, decided to introduce a storm naming system following the St Jude's day storm on 27–28 October 2013 which caused 17 deaths in Europe and the 2013–14 Atlantic winter storms in Europe to give a single, authoritative naming system to prevent confusion with the media and public using different names for the same storms.
The first windstorm to be named was Abigail on 10 November 2015.

Reasoning

The objectives behind the decision were to:
The names will be used on predicted large-scale, cyclonic windstorms with potential for significant land-based wind impacts. This may result in names being allocated to events that are below the traditional Beaufort scale definition of a storm.

Designation

A storm will be named when it is deemed able to have a "substantial" impact on the UK or Ireland. Met Éireann names any storm which triggers a status Orange or Red weather warning focusing on wind, though consideration was also given to rain and snow events in 2016–17. The basis for such as outlined on their weather warning service are mean wind speeds in excess of or gusts over. Similarly, the Met Office name storms that have the potential to cause medium or high impacts to the UK. It describes the wind strength relative to observations such as "falling trees or tiles and other items like garden furniture being blown around and even a number of properties left without electrical power."
Status Amber or Status Red weather warnings will be applied to named storms.
In the case of ex-tropical storms or hurricanes, the original name allocated by the US National Hurricane Center in Miami will continue to be used. This happened when Ex-Hurricane Ophelia hit Ireland and Britain in October 2017, although Brian was the next scheduled name on the list.
The less common letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are never used, in keeping with the US hurricane warning system.
In September 2015, the two Met offices consulted the public via a "Name our storms" campaign and chose the first batch of names.

Winter storm names

Records