HOW EMMA COULD HAVE BEEN... HECTOR

EMMA has been on everyone’s lips this week as the storm battered the country and brought it to a standstill… but where did she get her name?

Storms are usually named in alphabetical order, so you are forgiven if you have been puzzled by the naming of Storm Emma – given that we encountered Storm Eleanor in December.

The reason is because storms are named by national meteorological services and Emma was christened by the Portuguese Met Office after first hitting the Portuguese Azores Islands. She retained her name as she passed through the rest of Europe.

A list of storm names for the UK and Ireland was jointly decided by Met Éireann and the UK’s Met Office for 2017/2018. Had the storm hit Ireland or the UK first, it would have been called Hector.