Northern Ireland weather: Storm Jocelyn named after Co-Armagh born scientist

Storm Jocelyn has been named by the Irish weather service Met Éireann after Prof Bell Burnell, who discovered the first pulsating radio stars, or pulsars, in 1967 and has led a distinguished career in research and teaching, with an emphasis on empowering women in physics.

So who decided to start personifying storms with names? The answer is the Met Office. In 2014 it followed the example of America and started giving storms with the potential to cause medium or high wind impacts, alternating male and female names. The formulation was set up by the US National Hurricane Center in the 1970s. The list does not include Q, U, X, Y and Z, to comply with international storm-naming conventions, so if you are called Quentin, Una, Xavier, Yvonne or Zachary, your moment of fame is, for the moment at least, on hold.

In September 2015 the Met Office started a special campaign called Name Our Storms, asking the public to send in their suggestions for names. The most popular names put forward by the public were made into a list, in alphabetical order, with other Irish names suggested by Met Éireann . The first windstorm to be named was Abigail on November 10, 2015.

The Met Office hoped that naming big storms will make people more aware of them and how dangerous they can be. Last September, a in partnership with Met Éireann and KNMI (the Dutch national weather forecasting service), it announced the new list of storm names for the 2023/24 season.

It said contributions to the list include submissions from the public and names of those involved in responses to severe weather. It said wind is the primary consideration for naming a storm, but additional impacts from rain or snow were also be considered in the naming process.

Met Office head of Situational Awareness Will Lang, who leads responses in times of severe weather, said: “ Naming storms helps to ease communication of severe weather and provides clarity when people could be impacted by the weather. This year, it’s great to be able to recognise the collaborative efforts of some of our partners across the UK with the inclusion of names from some partner organisations. Working across different agencies allows us to help as many people as possible be prepared for severe weather.”

Storm Agnes, which was recognised as the first storm of the season, was named after Agnes Mary Clerke, an Irish astronomer and science writer. Storm Ciarán was named after Ciarán Fearon, a civil servant who works in the Department for Infrastructure in Northern Ireland. His job is to ensure key information is shared on river levels and coastal flooding.

After Jocelyn has been and gone, Kathleen, Lillian, Minnie, Nicholas, Olga, Piet, Regina, Stuart, Tamiko, Vincent, Walid are the next storms all waiting in the wings.

This year is the first time the list has broken with the traditional male/female ordering of names, in order to allow the inclusion of some of the more popular submitted names.