Barometer | 9 March 2017

Naming the weather

Former BBC weatherman Bill Giles has said he’s fed up with storms being named.
— The practice of naming storms in the UK began with storm Abigail in October 2015, although some earlier storms, like Bertha in 2014, were the remnants of hurricanes already named in the US. The St Jude’s Day storm of 2013 took its name from the saint’s day on which it fell.

— The US National Hurricane Centre first named storms in 1950, when it started calling them by a phonetic alphabet: Able, Baker, Charlie etc. Three years later it switched to women’s names, starting with Alice, a damp squib with winds not exceeding 60mph. Its first male storm was Bob in 1979, a 65mph weakling.

— The practice began earlier in the Pacific; Australian meteorologist Clement Wragge was naming storms in the late 19th century..

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Source: European Automobile Manufacturers’ Assocation

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