In October 2013, seventeen people died throughout Europe following a storm on St Jude’s day.
After this the Irish and UK Met offices decided to introduce a storm naming system to give a single authoritative name to storms, the first storm was called Abigail in November 2015.
Storms that trigger a status Orange or Red weather warning will be named.
The names were chosen by the public in Ireland and the UK and they are male and female names in alphabetical order.
At the beginning of each year the first storm has a female name, the second a male name and so on.
Names beginning with Q,U,X,Y and Z are not used.
As this storm originated in the Atlantic it was named by the National Hurricane Center in America as Ophelia, the first name for a storm in Ireland 2017/2018 will be Aileen.