Comment: Giving dangerous weather a human name makes us more wary Published on: 24 February 2017 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Elizabeth Lewis discusses the history and the research behind naming storms. Gareth Fuller / PA , Doris sounds like the sort of name your grandmother might have. It鈥檚 not particularly scary. But the name now has a rather different association, after 鈥淪torm Doris鈥� tore through the UK. The Met Office, the UK鈥檚 national weather forecaster, put much of the country on 鈥渁mber alert鈥� and along with severe rain and snow. The Met Office first warned about Doris , while it was still travelling across the North Atlantic. The idea is that giving storms human names makes them easy to remember and talk about, meaning people are more aware and prepared when they hit 鈥� certainly more prepared than if faced by a generic 鈥渉igh wind forecast鈥�. This is the second winter season in which the Met Office has run a pilot scheme to name these events. Each summer, it announces a list of names, alternating between male and female in alphabetical order, and the moment a new storm is spotted it acquires the next name on the list. Doris is the 15th storm to be named 鈥� and the fourth this season. The Met Office鈥檚 thinking is that names will better communicate dangerous, high-impact weather events to the public, and can thus streamline the warning system. Storm naming was first introduced in 1945 for and was quickly picked up by the World Meteorology Organisation and in Europe and America. It is now very common across the world. Just think of 鈥渃elebrities鈥� such as Katrina, Sandy or Yolanda 鈥� the Philippine name for the incredibly destructive Typhoon Haiyan (itself a Chinese name). Doris warning in the Daily Mirror. The larger British storms often pick up unofficial names anyway. For instance, the 2013 that travelled across southern England or the 2012 . But because these events are named after they have happened, different media outlets can confuse the issue by calling them different things 鈥� the 缅北禁地 storm, for instance, was also dubbed 鈥溾��. By having a predetermined list that runs , the Met Office can name the storm before it hits, allowing a clear and more powerful warning. What counts as a storm? While the public and media consider any severe weather event to be a storm, the term has a much more specific meaning in meteorology (winds 10 or above on the Beaufort scale 鈥� that鈥檚 55mph, or 89kmh). This meant heavy rainstorms with little wind could slip through unnamed and unhyped, despite the risk of floods. Indeed, heavy flooding just after Christmas 2015 was incorrectly attributed to Storm Frank when it actually came from nameless rainfall 鈥� exactly the sort of confusion the names were meant to avoid in the first place. The Met Office has therefore had to relax its definition of what constitutes a 鈥渟torm鈥�. This season, all high-impact weather events are named. But does naming storms actually help? The most obvious benefit is that a name generates an instant hashtag and search term:
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