Agnes up first! 2023/24 storm names explained

With Agnes up first on Wednesday, what storm names will follow? And how does the naming system work?

The UK Met Office, Met Éireann and the Dutch National Weather Service (KNMI) together revealed the names for the 2023/2024 Storm Season which began on September 1st.

The names chosen are reflective of each nation: the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands, and their cultures, with names mainly suggested by members of the public.

This year, the first storm will be named Agnes, while the second will be named Babet – following a pattern first established by the US National Hurricane Center in the 1970s. Ciarán will follow as the third storm, with the full list below:

The eagle eyed among you may have realised something amiss, in accordance with international storm naming conventions the letters, Q, U, X, Y, and Z will not be used.

These five letters are not utilised, in part due to the lack of variety in names beginning with the letters and also to maintain convention with the US hurricane warning system.

Storms are named when they could cause ‘medium’ or ‘high’ impacts in one of the three partner countries. Meteorologists say the naming practice helps provide consistent and authoritative messaging in times of severe weather.

The naming of storms in the UK and Ireland came to fruition in 2015 by a “Name Our Storms” campaign run by the Met Office and Met Éireann following the St Jude’s Day storm in October 2013 that killed 17 people across Europe.

The first named storm was then Storm Abigail in November 2015 and since then names suggested by the public have been used.

Other groups in Europe also name storms and the agreed practice is that when any national weather service names a weather system all other weather services keep that name.

Ex-hurricanes that cross the Atlantic Ocean also retain the name they are given by the US National Hurricane Center in Miami – as happened with Ophelia in October 2017.