Storm Teresa? Naming rights

IS it because we have started naming them that Ireland and Britain have been subjected to an alphabet soup of storms in the past month?

This is the first year that the British Met Office and Met Éireann have named storms, in the same way that tropical storms are named, including an emphasis on gender equality, with alternative female and male names.

As the latest weather system approached, Met Éireann’s head of forecasting, Gerald Fleming, said Storm Desmond would be a “once in several decades” event for many parts of the State. The trouble is that those once in several decades events seem to be coming round with increasingly regularity.

Since the beginning of last month we have already had Abigail, Barney, Clodagh, and now Desmond. At this rate, we should be facing Storm Zelda by May.

Perhaps we should nominate Teresa as a storm name by way of tribute to RTÉ journalist Teresa Mannion after her dramatic wind- and rain-lashed report from the promenade in Salthill, Galway, on Saturday evening.