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| NASA's Aqua satellite captured this dramatic image of the powerful Feb 12th, 2014, cyclonic storm pushing across Ireland and into England |
Orla, Desmond and Barney could soon be dominating headlines across Ireland after they were among 21 storm names announced today.
Met Éireann and the UK Met Office have teamed up in a joint initiative to bring greater public awareness of warnings for medium and high-impact windstorms affecting Ireland and/or the UK.
Working together, the agencies hope that naming winter storms will help raise public awareness of severe weather and ensure greater public safety.
A list of storm names has been agreed using names common to Ireland and the UK, carefully selected from amongst those submitted by the public. This common list will be used by both organisations.
The agreed list for this Winter Season is as follows:
Abigail
Barney
Clodagh
Desmond
Eva
Frank
Gertrude
Henry
Imogen
Jake
Katie
Lawrence
Mary
Nigel
Orla
Phil
Rhonda
Steve
Tegan
Vernon
Wendy
This scheme is focused on large-scale, cyclonic windstorms with potential for significant land-based wind impacts – often systems which develop rapidly and/or move quickly towards us; this means that all severe wind events giving rise to status Orange or status Red weather warnings will be named.
In the case of ex-tropical Storms or hurricanes, the original name allocated by the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami will continue to be used.
Names will be assigned based on the potential for a disruptive event following liaison between the Duty Forecasters in both Dublin and Exeter. This also means that occasionally there will be storms named which prove to have less impact or do not develop as expected.
Technically, in the Beaufort Scale, the term ‘Storm’ is reserved for wind events of mean speeds between 89 and 102 km/h. These are rare enough events overland in Ireland, occurring every couple of years or so on average; somewhat more frequently in the coastal waters around Ireland. However in the cases outlined here, names may be assigned at substantially lower thresholds.