How did Storm Erin get its name and what comes next in 2025?

UK forecasters are keeping a close eye on Storm Erin as it rages off the coast of Africa – but it’s not yet known if it will reach our shores.

It’s been less than a fortnight since Storm Floris hit parts of the UK, bringing ‘unseasonably strong’ winds as high as 106mph in northern Scotland.

Floris forced flight cancellations at Glasgow Airport and saw thousands of people across Northern Ireland lose power to their homes.

But the real weather enthusiasts among you might have noticed something odd about this name: aren’t storms named alphabetically? And since E is before F in the alphabet, shouldn’t Erin actually begin with the letter G?

That’s a very astute observation, but there’s a very sensible reason for the discrepancy.

How did Storm Erin get its name?

Storm Erin is currently forming off Cabo Verde on the west coast of Africa – and as it’s currently nowhere near the UK, it hasn’t been named by our Met Office yet.

Currently classified as a tropical storm, Erin is the fifth named storm of the 2025 Atlantic season, and it is expected to strengthen into a hurricane as it moves westward.

Right now forecasters are predicting Erin will head towards the Bahamas by the end of the week, moving slightly north but not enough to bring it close to the UK – unless it dramatically curves northeast, forecaster Netweather suggests.

If Erin did make a major turn and head towards the UK, our Met Office would continue to refer to it with the name it’s already been given, which is why it would technically be moving backwards in our storm name alphabet.

What were the UK’s most recent storm names?

Storm Floris was always going to be the next storm due after the Met Office officially named Storm Eowyn.

Official storm names used in the UK are updated annually at the start of the autumn and winter storm season, generally running from early September until late August the following year.

The UK has used this system since 2015 to make communicating dangers from extreme weather simpler.

Storm Eowyn, which is thought to have been the strongest storm here for a decade, was the first named storm of 2025 but the fifth named storm of the 2024-25 storm season.

It brought record-breaking gusts of over 100mph in Scotland, while Ireland took an even bigger battering with 114mph recorded.

The UK Met Office works with the Irish Met Eireann in Ireland and Dutch weather service KNMI to pick the names, with a mix of popular names from each country.

Eowyn was Irish, and the next storm was Dutch, taking the name Floris which means ‘flowering’, followed by a second Dutch name Gerben.

It’s also the name of a minor member of the Dutch Royal Family – Prince Floris, the youngest son of Queen Juliana’s daughter Princess Margriet.

At some point afterwards, Hugo and Izzy will come to fly the flag for the UK.

Met Office list of UK storm names

Other names that made this year’s list include James, Lewis, Mavis – allinspired by the Met Office’s 170-year history.

The forecaster said James is named after Group Captain James Stagg, who was the chief meteorologist responsible for advising General Dwight Eisenhower on the weather forecast for the D-Day landings.

Lewis comes from Lewis Fry Richardson, who devised a theory to use maths and physics to make weather forecasts using computers.

Mavis is named after Mavis Hinds, who worked on the earliest Met Office computers.

In the outgoing year, there were twelve named storms in alphabetical order.

It was the first time there were enough to get as far as the letter L, with Storm Lilian, so unless we have a particularly stormy year it’s unlikely we’ll get to see Storm Wren.

How do storms get their names?

Forecasters get to choose them, and the names often have some significance.

For example, Bert was put forward by KNMI (the Dutch national weather service) after they asked the public to come up with names at an event.

When the list was launched in August, Will Lang, who leads severe weather responses for the Met Office, said: ‘This year, as we celebrate our 170th birthday, it’s great to be able to honour those who have had an impact on our long history of pioneering weather and climate science services.’

Long before storms had official names, they were often identified formally by the places they hit, or by saints.

In the Atlantic, names rotate alphabetically, alternating between male and female. However, names beginning with Q, U, X, Y, and Z are skipped due to a lack of suitable names.

Some storm names become infamous for their death toll and huge impacts – such as Hurricane Katrina and Sandy in the US and Typhoon Haiyan in the Phillipines.

While it’s unlikely we’ll ever see storms causing that level of devastation in the UK, storm names linked to horrific events like the above are retired, to avoid confusion or emotional stress in future.

A version of this article was originally published on December 6, 2024

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