We called it storm Ciara in the UK. I wonder why we don’t unify names.
There are now two regions in Europe where names are decided in cooperation: West, and Southwest.
West is Ireland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Belgium, where storms tend to originate in the West.
Southwest is the Iberian peninsula and France.
A third region (Southeast) is being set up for the Mediterranean.
Every region has its own list of names, but when a storm is first named in one region, the other regions will use that name instead of assigning their own (if the storm crosses regions).
This means that everyone called this storm Ciara, except for the Germans. Germany is an exception, and has its own (commercial) naming system at the moment.
Source: https://www.knmi.nl/kennis-en-datacentrum/uitleg/naamgeving-... (Dutch)
In seriousness, wasn't Storm Ciara named by Met Éireann ? that was certainly my impression, given that most people in the UK struggled to pronounce it. So there is some unification between The Met offices of Ireland and the UK with regard to naming.
https://www.countryliving.com/uk/news/a28924357/met-office-s...
> The names are a mix of British, Irish and Dutch monikers.
To 'raise awareness' of weather events, as if one might not notice them otherwise. To be less cynical, people might pay more attention to weather warnings if they are named storms? Not sure how long that effect will stick if we have a named storm twice a month! I think you might not be far wrong saying it's about grabbing headlines.