Name storming...

I still can't get used to the idea of naming British storms with people names, it seems a silly idea to me. On the back of storm Ciara comes storm Dennis, I bet he's going to be a menace (groan). So far this year we've also had storm Atiyah and storm Brendan with lots more potential storm personalities to come - storm Ellen, Francis, Gerda, Hugh, Iris, Jan, Kitty (here kitty, kitty), Liam (he's mad for it), Maura, Noah (bloody ark required for that one), Olivia, Piet, Roisin, Tara, Vince and Willow (that one's a bit batty). 

Bad luck if your name begins with a Q, U, X, Y or Z because you don't get a look in. So if you're a Quentin, Ursula, Xavier, Yasmin, or Zebediah then you ain't never getting a storm named after you.

In Europe, storms are named jointly between The UK Met Office, Met Éireann and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. I wonder if that will change now we are out of Europe? Perhaps we should call all of our storms Boris, then they could take place in teacups and have the power of a damp, windy, slightly warm fart.

According to the Met Office, the decision for a storm to be given a name is “based on a combination of both the impact the weather may have, and the likelihood of those impacts occurring". Therefore, storm Polly(I'll only be ten minutes)anna ain't never going to happen. Here be the first commandment - A storm will only be named when it has the potential to cause an amber or red weather warning. 

Well, who really believes the Met Office anyway? Oh, they are better than they were but I'm never going to forget that Michael Fish saying that we weren't going to get a Hurricane back in 1987 and then we did. 

As for the naming process, it doesn't seem to be particularly scientific. They probably just put the names of everyone who works in the office in a hat and then just randomly pull them out - Rihanna, Chayce, Kylie? Yes, they'll do, but don't forget to go, boy, girl, boy, girl - storm naming sexual equality and all that, don't cha know. After all, this isn't the 1930s Cedric. 

Of course, the Met Office welcomes naming suggestions via email, social media, and passenger pigeon. I suggested Attila, Benito, Caligula, and Donald but never heard anything back from them. Maybe my pigeon blew away in a storm. 

In the past storms were named by grumpy old men sipping bitter in the corners of dingey, badly-lit pubs - 'The Big Storm', 'The Bloody Big Storm', 'The Great Storm', 'The Not So Great Storm', 'The Farty Piddling Rather Disappointing Storm', 'The I Wouldn't Call That A Storm At All Storm'. Anyway, you get the general idea. 

It's not so much brainstorming as Brian storming. But it can't do much harm I guess, a storm by any other name would smell as sweet. And with that, I'm going to storm off.