James, Lewis & Mavis: Met Office storm names revealed for 2024/25
The Met Office has announced its list of storm names for 2024/25 to coincide with the start of meteorological autumn.
James, Lewis and Mavis are among the names that have been compiled by the Met Office, in partnership with Ireland's Met Éireann and KNMI forecasting service in the Netherlands.
The group named twelve storms during the 2023-24 season with Lilian marking the first time 'L' has been reached since naming began back in 2015.
For this season, Ashley, Bert and Conall will be the first three named storms.
UK contributions to the list include submissions from the public and names of significant people from the Met Office's 170-year history:
James, Lewis and Mavis have all been included. James is named after Group Captain James Stagg, whose D-Day forecast was critical to the outcome of World War II. Lewis after Lewis Fry Richardson, who devised a theory to use maths and physics to make weather forecasts using computers, and Mavis after Mavis Hinds, who undertook pioneering work on the earliest Met Office computers.
Why do we name storms?
Storms are named to aid communication when severe weather is in the forecast. Doing so can help everyone to keep themselves, their property and businesses safe and protected at times of severe weather.
For Storm Eunice, which impacted the UK in 2022, 99% of people within the red warning area in the southeast were aware of the warnings, highlighting how effective storm naming is as a communications tool.
Sometimes storms are named by different national meteorological services. When this occurs, the Met Office, Met Éireann and KNMI will adopt the given name.
How are storm names chosen?
Every year, the three forecasting bodies asks for suggestions from members of the public. A list of names is then compiled using these suggestions with an aim to reflect the diversity across the different countries.
Storms are named in alphabetical order, although letters further down the alphabet are far less likely to be used.
When do we name storms?
Storms will get named by the group when they're deemed to have the potential to cause 'medium' or 'high' impacts in the UK, Ireland or the Netherlands.
Wind is the primary consideration for naming a storm, but additional impacts from rain or snow will also be considered in the naming process.
Why are there no storm names for Q, U, X, Y and Z?
As is the case for the United States Hurricane Centre, storms in the UK are not named using the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z.
When does the storm season start?
In the UK, the storm season starts on September 1st - which also marks the beginning of the meteorological autumn - and runs until August 31st the following year.