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Wales Online
Wales Online
National
Cathy Owen

The Met Office has revealed the storm names for 2021/22

The Met Office has used the first day of meteorological autumn, to reveal the storm names for this season.

And it starts with a name of Welsh origin - Arwen - which means meaning 'noble maiden' and is also the name of the princess of the Elves in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Other Welsh names included in the list are Gladys and Olwen.

Every year, the Met Office is in partnership with Met Éireann in Ireland and KNMI in the Netherlands, ask for people to nominate the names for storms.

Read more: Forest Whitaker shares pictures from 'beautiful Wales'

The joint initiative was introduced seven years ago to raise awareness of any potentially damaging, disruptive or life-threatening severe weather conditions.

More than 10,000 names were submitted for consideration for this year's list, with people putting forward the names of their friends, family and pets.

The last storm to hit Wales this year was Storm Evert in July, following on from Storm Aiden which hit the UK on October 31, 2020, Bella on Boxing Day, Christoph between January 19 and 22 this year and Darcy at the start of February.

Though the public gets a say in naming storms, the weather services get the final say.

So while some names are chosen for more light-hearted reasons, the naming criteria must also look at whether there's already been a serious storm of the same name and whether the name has been used by another storm-naming group.

There are some restrictions, however, and the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are not used for storm names in accordance with international conventions.

Another thing to note is that a number of European countries -- including France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Denmark also name higher impact storms.

This means if a storm that originates and is named in another country reaches Britain, Ireland or the Netherlands, it keeps its original name.

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