Met Office names storms for next 12 months as one rule can never be broken

Ryan Paton
·3-min read
Merseyside was battered by Storm Lillian last week
-Credit: (Image: Liverpool Echo)


The Met Office has announced the storm names for the 2024/25 season. The UK was hit with Storm Lillian last week as the Met Office issued a yellow warning for Merseyside.

To be named, a storm must have the potential to cause an amber or red warning, meaning it is likely to bring severe or dangerous weather causing travel disruptions, power cuts, and the potential risk to life and property. Storm Lillian was the 12th named storm of the 2023/4 season and the first time the letter L has been used for the name.

The list of storms was first launched in 2015 and generally runs from early September until late August the following year, coinciding with the beginning of autumn.

Along with Met Eireann in Ireland and KNMI, the Dutch weather service, meteorologists name storms so that the communication of severe weather is easier. The upcoming storm season marks the Met Office's 170th birthday.

Will Lang, who leads responses in times of severe weather for the Met Office, said: “This year, as we celebrate our 170th birthday, it’s great to be able to honour those who have had an impact on our long history of pioneering weather and climate science services.”

James, Lewis and Mavis are all included in the new list in honour of figures from the Met Office’s 170-year history. The forecaster said James is named after Group Captain James Stagg, who was the chief meteorologist responsible for advising General Dwight Eisenhower on the weather forecast for the D-Day landings.

Lewis is included because of Lewis Fry Richardson, who devised a theory to use maths and physics to make weather forecasts using computers. Mavis is named after Mavis Hinds, who worked on the earliest Met Office computers.

The full list for 2024/25 is: Ashley, Bert, Conall, Darragh, Eowyn, Floris, Gerben, Hugo, Izzy, James, Kayleigh, Lewis, Mavis, Naoise, Otje, Poppy, Rafi, Sayuri, Tilly, Vivienne and Wren. The Met Office flags a storm using the National Severe Weather Warnings service, which looks at both the potential impact of weather and the likelihood of such impacts actually occurring.

One of the three weather services will name a storm if it is deemed to have potential to cause an amber or red warning. The Met Office said no storm names begin with Q, U, X, Y and Z to keep consistency in official storm naming in the North Atlantic.

A set of lists of names are used on a six year rotation by countries in the North Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, with the 2021 list due to be reused in 2027, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

These lists skip Q, U, X, Y and Z because, for safety reasons, storm names must be easily recognisable and it is difficult to find six suitable names for these letters. Letters from the Greek alphabet were used in two particularly severe years when there were more named storms than the 21 names on the list.

A supplemental list of names was used from 2021. Particular names can be dropped from a list and replaced at the request of any WMO member state if that name attains "special notoriety" due to human casualties or damage caused.

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