The Met Office and Met Eireann have announced the list of storm names chosen by the public for autumn and winter 2015/16.
Last month, the Met Office together with Met Eireann announced a pilot project to name wind storms that have the potential to affect the UK and/or Ireland.
Thousands of suggestions were sent in by email, through the Met Office Facebook pages and @metoffice on Twitter and the final list will be used by both the Met Office and Met Éireann.
To ensure they are in line with the US National Hurricane Centre naming convention, the weather services are not going to include names which begin with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z. This will maintain consistency for official storm naming in the North Atlantic.
As the UK and Ireland’s National Met Services, the Met Office and Met Éireann operate to maintain public safety through severe weather warnings and forecasts. Working together, it is hoped that naming storms will help raise awareness of severe weather and ensure greater safety of the public.
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The Met Office and Met Éireann will continue to issue weather warnings in the normal way using the Met Office National Severe Weather Warning Service and Met Éireann Weather Warnings. A storm will then be named when it is deemed to have the potential to cause substantial impacts in the UK and/or Ireland.
To avoid any confusion over naming, if a storm is the remnants of a tropical storm or hurricane that has moved across the Atlantic, the already established method of referring to it as, e.g. ‘Ex-hurricane X’ will continue.