When
I heard that the Met Office wanted to name storms for the UK and Ireland, I
must admit I did wonder why.
I
know the Americans name their hurricanes, and I did muse why we also wanted to
import this idea from across the Atlantic, along with Thanksgiving, 'Black
Friday' and 'Cyber Monday'.
However,
I discovered that they're not trying to make them sound friendly and cute, the
idea is by naming them it is hoped to raise awareness of predicted severe
weather, and therefore encourage people to adequately protect themselves.
Our
storms will only be named when they could potentially cause 'substantial'
impact, so we hopefully won't have a huge list of names forever being mentioned
in the forecasts.
The
Met Office opened up the choosing of names to the Great British public via
social media. The results are perhaps
surprising - I was expecting to see at least some celebs or sports stars in
there.
But
no, we have a choice of names, alternating between male and female as is
apparently the custom, which seem to embrace monikers from all areas of the
British Isles.
If
you haven't seen it already, here's the definitive list - Abigail; Barney;
Clodagh; Desmond; Eva; Frank; Gertrude; Henry; Imogen; Jake; Katie; Lawrence;
Mary; Nigel; Orla; Phil; Rhonda; Steve; Tegan; Vernon; Wendy.
To
be honest, I would find it hard to be scared of Storm Steve, Nigel or Phil as
they sound like mates you'd have a drink and share a packet of crisps with in
the pub.
However,
Storms Clodagh and Gertrude sound like they could be very fearsome - I'm
certainly not going to mess with them.
And
I can almost picture the weather presenter saying the words 'Britain, batten
down the hatches and brace yourselves for Barney!'- although I might
momentarily have a big purple dinosaur flashback...
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