FALLOUT
Storm Fionn had hit Ireland with a bang but it caused a stir in the media for some unusual reasons. Ireland’s Met Éireann and the UK’s Met Office have a joint storm naming system but use different criteria. A UK weather presenter, Liam Dutton from Channel 4, criticised the naming of Storm Fionn by Met Éireann, arguing it wasn’t a storm but a “squeeze in the isobars”. Dutton argued that Fionn didn’t have a traditional storm ‘circulation’ but Met Éireann’s Evelyn Cusack responded – “I can understand his point – he wants a storm circulation – but it fulfilled our criteria …It doesn’t matter what we call it, the point is if our system moves on to the UK they would use the name and vice versa so it doesn’t really matter what the criteria are.”
To complicate matters even more, France and Germany have their own naming systems, meaning Storm Fionn was called other names in Europe. To end any confusion though, plans are in place to adopt a unified naming system across Europe in the near future amongst the various national meteorological agencies. In America winter storms aren’t named by any official agency but rather ‘The Weather Channel’, a TV company. Does this all really matter? It seems so, the UK Met Office reported that naming storms was found to have “improved people’s ability to understand the risks of severe weather and… made people more likely to take action.”
