Met Éireann, along with the UK Met Office and KNMI, the national weather services of the UK and the Netherlands, have released the new list of storm names for the 2022-2023 storm season.
Similar to previous years, each weather service has contributed names suggested by members of the public.
The list for 2022/2023 is: Antoni; Betty; Cillian; Daisy; Elliot; Fleur; Glen; Hendrika; Íde; Johanna; Khalid; Loes; Mark; Nelly; Owain; Priya; Ruadhán; Sam; Tobias; Val; and Wouter.
Storm names
Since 2014, Met Éireann and the UK Met Office have been working together in a ‘Storm Names’ partnership to help raise awareness of the potential impacts of severe weather, and were joined by KMNI in 2019.
Storms are named when they could cause ‘medium’ or ‘high’ impacts in one of the partner countries and are aimed at helping provide consistent, authoritative messaging in times of severe weather.
The weather service that expects the severe weather to hit most names the storm, generally in conjunction with Orange/Red warnings. These warnings could be for wind, rain or snow or a combination of these.
Other groups in Europe also name storms and the agreed practice is that when any national weather service names a weather system, all other weather services keep that name.
When a storm is an ex-hurricane it retains the name given by the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, in the US, such as Ophelia (October, 2017).
Importance of naming
Evelyn Cusack, head of Forecasting Division in Met Éireann, welcomes storm naming as a very important tool in national weather services’ warnings arsenal.
She said: ‘The annual unveiling of the new storm names on September 1, creates greater public awareness and, crucially, during the winter, when a storm is named for its potential Orange/Red impacts, it creates a more impactful public ‘call to action’ helping to save lives and property.
“During past storms, the public has responded positively to the advice given by experts and this new list of names will help us to prepare society for extreme weather events which is all the more important in our changing climate.”
The warnings page on Met Éireann’s website and app displays weather warnings for Northern Ireland, whenever they are issued by the UK Met Office.
The national forecaster said that this provides a clear, authoritative one-stop shop for easy and reliable access to the latest weather warnings for the island of Ireland.