Forget Ciara, let’s give storms fearsome names

The 21st century practice of naming our more inclement ‘weather events’ continued at the weekend as the storm known as Ciara wreaked havoc across the country.

Travel was disrupted, trees were felled, garden chairs were toppled and thousands of recently-emptied wheelie bins never stood a chance of staying upright.

But despite some serious incidents and extensive chaos, the Met Office managed to deflect any anger over the storm by naming it after a well-meaning public relations professional. So everyone just shrugged and put it down to poor old

Ciara having a bad day.

The naming process is a curious one but makes a strange sort of sense. Everyone still refers to the famous

1987 storm as either

The Hurricane or The

Great Storm, which kind of leaves nowhere else to go for any subsequent hurricanes or great storms which might also deserve the title.

So let’s instead give them names, which are apparently issued to

‘humanise’ the storms.

A look at the Met

Office’s list of storm names for 2020 shows that we are to be visited this weekend by the rather benign-sounding Storm Dennis.

Who could ever get cross with Dennis, even when he’s merrily ripping down our fence panels and throwing tiles off the roof ?

Why not make the storms sound a bit more fearsome by recycling the names of the athletes in 1990s TV favourite Gladiators?

I’m sure most of us would think twice before venturing out in Wolf, Jet or Cobra, or weigh down the wheelie bin at the very least.