Met Éireann reveal names of the next 21 storms to hit Ireland

Hurricane Brian, Caroline and Niall could blow into Ireland over the coming months.

It is now the third year that names have been used to describe the extremely stormy weather in Ireland and the UK. The public gets to decide the names which has been found to help raise awareness of upcoming harsh weather conditions. The first storm of the year will be female and will be named ‘Aileen’, the gender of the first storm alternates each year and follows Angus in the 2016-17 season. Gerald Fleming, Head of Forecasting at Met Éireann, said:

"Last winter was a very quiet one weather-wise and we only worked our way through five named storms, from Angus to Ewan. While it is too early to say whether the coming winter will be a stormy one or a quiet one we are prepared with a whole new set of 21 names for whatever nature may throw at us. "As before Met Éireann forecasters will work in close co-operation with our colleagues from the UK Met Office to keep all the peoples of these islands warned of impending severe weather."

Storms are normally handed a unique name when it is decided that they have the potential to cause medium to high impact in the UK and/or Ireland which results in a yellow, orange or red weather warning status from Met Éireann. In order to comply with international storm-naming conventions, they do not include names beginning with Q, U, X, Y, and Z. Here are this year's names: https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/905430398926278656

• Aileen
• Brian
• Caroline
• Dylan
• Eleanor
• Fionn
• Georgina
• Hector
• Iona
• James
• Karen
• Larry
• Maeve
• Niall
• Octavia
• Paul
• Rebecca
• Simon
• Tali
• Victor
• Winifred