UK speeding through list of named storms with nine in five months
The furthest a storm season has reached in the alphabet is the letter K in 2016.
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Your support makes all the difference.Storm Isha marks only the second time in a UK storm season that the letter I has been reached in the alphabet.
Storm seasons run from the start of September to the end of the following August.
The first time the letter I was reached was in February 2016, with Storm Imogen.
The furthest a storm season has reached in the alphabet is the letter K, when Storm Kate was named in March 2016.
The Met Office began naming storms in 2015.
Last year’s storm season, which ran from September 2022 to August 2023, made it only as far as the letter B, with Storm Betty in August.
By contrast, this year’s season has seen storms named in every month so far: Agnes in September 2023; Babet in October; Ciaran and Debi in November; Elin, Fergus and Gerrit in December; and Henk and Isha in January 2024.
It is the only instance to date of named storms occurring in the first five months of a season.
The list of storm names is compiled jointly by the Met Office, Met Eireann in Ireland and KNMI, the Dutch national weather forecasting service.
It is assembled from suggestions submitted by the public and by staff within the three organisations, and is announced at the end of August just before the start of the new storm season.
Not all of the alphabet is used when naming storms.
The letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are omitted, in line with the convention established by the US National Hurricane Centre.
It means the storm names still available for the current season are Jocelyn, Kathleen, Lilian, Minnie, Nicholas, Olga, Piet, Regina, Stuart, Tamiko, Vincent and Walid.