UK and Irish forecasters hope names, chosen from public’s suggestions, will help raise awareness of storms and help people track them on social media

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Nigel could soon be laying waste to the shores of Britain and Ireland. It is one of 21 names chosen by weather forecasters after a public appeal for suggestions to name powerful storms.

The UK’s Met Office weather forecasting service and Met Éireann, its Irish equivalent, hope that the names will help to raise public awareness of the strongest storms affecting both countries.

Both organisations will share a list, chosen from names common to Ireland and the UK, which has been selected from thousands of suggestions sent in by the public through email, Facebook and Twitter.

A storm will be named when duty forecasters in Dublin and Exeter decide it has the potential to cause “medium” or “high” wind impacts in either the UK, Ireland or both.

The list begins with Abigail, and then will alternate between male and female names through the alphabet. However, it misses out the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z, in line with the convention for official storm naming in the North Atlantic.

To avoid confusion, if a storm is the dying gusts of a tropical storm or hurricane that has crossed the ocean, it will still be styled according to the current convention of “ex-hurricane X”, as chosen by the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami.

Although the latest project is just a pilot scheme, experts have said that naming wind storms, such as the St Jude’s day storm of 2013, makes it easier for the public to follow their progress and reference them on social media.

Announcing the project in September, the Met Office said: “The naming of storms using a single authoritative system should aid the communication of approaching severe weather through media partners and other government agencies.

“In this way the public will be better placed to keep themselves, their property and businesses safe.”

Storms that move in from the Atlantic often hit mostly strongly in Ireland and the system will tie in with Met Éireann’s National Warnings and the Met Office’s National Severe Weather Warning Service (NSWWS) of yellow, amber and red.

Since the names are assigned based on the potential for disruption, the services admit that sometimes storms will be named, which in the end have less impact than anticipated.

The named storms over Ireland and the British Isles are unlikely to be as powerful as named storms on the other side of the Atlantic. The word “storm” is technically reserved for winds blowing at average speeds of 89-102kmh (55-63mph).

“However, in the cases outlined here, names may be assigned at substantially lower thresholds,” said Met Éireann.

The full list of names for 2015-16