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Storm Evert: Why Are Storms Given Names And When Did It Start?

Storm Evert: Why Are Storms Given Names And When Did It Start?

Apparently there's a criteria for naming storms.

Laura Sanders

Laura Sanders

As Storm Evert makes its way across the UK this weekend, many Britons are left wondering why we name storms and when we started doing that?

The UK is in for an usually damp and cold weekend for the time of year, with Evert bringing in "very unsettled weather with rain or showers, some heavy and thundery across England and Wales where unseasonably windy in the south and southeast," according to the Met Office.

Storm Evert UK weather forecast 30th July 2021. (
Met Office)

When did we start naming storms in the UK?

If you don't recall ever hearing the weather presenter naming a storm in your childhood, you're not imagining it. Naming storms in the UK is a fairly new tradition; it only began in 2015.

The US has been naming storms since the 1950s. And to save confusion, any US storms which make their way to the UK will keep the name allocated to them by US authorities.

Why are storms named?

Boy rides his bike through a puddle after a storm. (
Unsplash/Vitolda Klein)

There's actually a criteria for naming a storm in the UK and not every storm is named (good job, we'd soon run out of names if that was the case).

Only storms which have the potential to cause an amber or red warning in the UK are given a name.

They're named to make it easier for the potential effects the storm could have on people and infrastructure to communicate in the media.

Who names the storms in the UK and how are the names decided?

Some people believe a storm is named after the meteorologist who found it - you can just imagine the race in the Met Office to be the first to report a new storm coming in. But actually, storm names are down to the public.

In 2015, the UK Met Office, Ireland's Met Éireann and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) started taking name submissions from the public for storms.

As you can imagine, they receive thousands of submissions every year, so some sifting through is involved.

The submissions are whittled down by the three Met Offices and published into a final list. The list is worked through in alphabetical order and alternating between male and female names. They have to be real human names and representative of those countries' diverse populations.

Storm names 2021. (
Met Office)

So far this year in the UK for example we've had: Alex, Barbara, Christoph, Darcy and Evert. The next storm to make its way to us is Storm Fleur.

Names starting with Q, U, X, Y and Z are never selected to match the naming conventions of the US National Hurricane Centre. "This will maintain consistency for official storm naming in the North Atlantic," the Met Office website said.

How do you suggest a storm name?

In the UK, you can submit a suggestion for a storm name either by emailing your suggestion to the Met Office: [email protected] or by getting in touch with the Met Office on social media.

So there you have it, now you know how storms are named and you can impress people with this useless bit of knowledge.

Featured Image Credit: Unsplash/Lucy Chian

Topics: Weather, UK News