All Things Met Eireann Related Go in Here (MOD NOTE #1)

08 September 2015

As the UK and Ireland’s National Met Services, the Met Office and Met Éireann operate to maintain public safety through severe weather warnings and forecasts. Working together, it is hoped that naming storms will help raise awareness of severe weather and ensure greater safety of the public.

In recent years the naming of wind storms that affected Ireland and the United Kingdom (such as 'Storm Darwin') has highlighted the benefits of establishing a formal system for the naming of mid-latitude storms. As storms moving in from the Atlantic often first make landfall on our shores, Met Éireann and the Met Office will be naming severe storms through the autumn and winter 2015/16.

Gerald Fleming, Head of Forecasting at Met Éireann, said: "It may be a cliche to say that the weather knows no boundaries, but increasingly the same can be said for news. When severe weather threatens National Met Services have the significant challenge - above and beyond the technical forecasting challenge - of bringing coherent and consistent messages to the public, to enable effective action in response. Putting names on severe storms helps the public to immediately relate to threatening weather systems.

"As we share a common interest in North Atlantic storms, it makes sense for Met Éireann in Ireland and the Met Office in the United Kingdom to share a common naming system for severe windstorms. We in the forecast office in Dublin look forward to working with our colleagues at the UK's national forecaster in using this common naming system for severe Atlantic storms, helping us to better communicate impending threats to the peoples of our islands."

Derrick Ryall, Head of the Public Weather Service at the Met Office, added: “The aim of this pilot is to provide a single authoritative naming system for the storms that affect UK and Ireland.

“We have seen how naming storms elsewhere in the world raises awareness of severe weather before it strikes. We hope that naming storms in line with the official severe weather warnings here will do the same and ensure everyone can keep themselves, their property and businesses safe and protected at times of severe weather.”

You can suggest names to Met Éireann via our Facebook page or by emailing customer.liaison@met.ie with the subject name of ‘nameourstorms’ and the suggested name in the email.

The names will be collated and a list compiled to include those proposed by Met Éireann. Storm names will then be taken from this list, in alphabetical order, alternating between male and female names.

A storm will be named when it is deemed to have the potential to cause ‘medium’ or ‘high’ wind impacts on the UK and/or Ireland, i.e. if a yellow, orange or red warning for wind has been issued by Met Éireann and/or the Met Office.

Discodog wrote: »

The radar appears to have had a revamp. Has anything, of significance, changed.

Discodog wrote: »

Looks like ME radar repairers don't do weekends. Shannon has been down all weekend.

Lumi wrote: »

Don't know about earlier this morning but it seems ok now

mattser wrote: »

As late as Tuesday they were calling it dry on Thursday. 48 hours ? Some reasoning.

franer1970 wrote: »

Why is it that Met Eireann's rain radar page only uses Cork & Dublin radars while the UK Met Office integrates Irish radar data into their own?
There's no kind of bilateral sharing agreement in place? The good people of Donegal aren't deserving of decent radar coverage from their national weather agency??

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

To be fair I don't think Met Eireann come onto Boards to decide their strategies... :-)

piuswal wrote: »

I'm sure Met Eireann would like to have an additional radar but they have no control over the purse strings.