Official names for this season's storms revealed

The monikers are among a list of 21 that will be used in alphabetical order to identify storms hitting the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands from today.The first storm to impact the countries will be named Aiden, followed by Bella and then Christoph.The names alternate from male to female.They were chosen from suggestions sent in by members of the public and reflect the three nationalities.Other names include Heulwen, Klaas, Naia, Evert and Saidhbhin.As in previous years Q, U, X, Y and Z will not be used, to comply with the international storm-naming conventions.Other European countries to name impactful storms include France, Spain and Portugal in south-west Europe and Sweden, Norway and Denmark in northern Europe.Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the national weather forecasting service in the Netherlands, joined the UK’s Met Office and Ireland’s Met Éireann in the west Europe group for the first time last year.Will Lang, head of the National Severe Weather Warning Service at the Met Office, said: “We are now entering our sixth year of the Name our Storms campaign and we look forward to working closely with our colleagues in Ireland and the Netherlands once again, continuing to raise awareness of the potential impacts of severe weather in order to keep people across our nations safe.“The impacts from storms Ciara and Dennis earlier this year are still fresh in many people’s minds, and although it’s too early to anticipate what weather this autumn and winter will bring we are prepared with a new list of names to help raise awareness of severe weather before it hits.”Gerard van der Steenhoven, director general at KNMI, said: “We gladly continue our collaboration with the UK Met Office and Met Éireann on storm forecasting.“As storms are not confined to national borders it makes a lot of sense to give common names to such extreme weather events.“As many people often travel between our countries the use of common names will make it a lot easier for them to appreciate the hazards represented by a large storm system.”

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