Weather
Storm season 2026-2027: why the first storm will be called Austen and the second Boelo
Last year a storm had already been named by 1 October; this season the list is still untouched in early October. When does a storm get a name, who comes up with it, and what lies behind the Dutch entries?
The storm page of the British Met Office has a table with three columns: the name, the date a storm was given that name, and the date of its impact on the UK, Ireland or the Netherlands. On 4 October only the names had been filled in. At the top is Austen, below it Boelo.
Last season things moved faster. Storm Amy was named on 1 October 2025, writes the Dutch weather service KNMI. Amy mainly swept over Great Britain, Ireland, France and Scandinavia; in the Netherlands a code yellow for severe gusts and rain applied on 4 October. On 23 and 24 October, storm Benjamin hit the Netherlands, with code orange for Zeeland, South Holland, North Holland, the Wadden area and the IJsselmeer area; in addition, code yellow had been issued for severe gusts.
When a storm gets a name
A storm gets a name when the KNMI issues a code orange or code red for gusts. In exceptional cases this can also happen with code yellow, for example when Britain or Ireland names a storm that could also bring rough weather here. If another European weather service has already named a storm, the KNMI adopts that name. That is how Benjamin got its name from Météo-France last year.
The aim is recognition, the KNMI writes: people should know before the dangerous weather arrives that something is coming. With Benjamin, in a KNMI snap poll, 97 per cent of those who had heard the warning (n=1,032) knew that the storm had a name; 83 per cent also said they knew the name. The poll covered North Holland, South Holland, Zeeland and the Wadden area.
A list from three countries
The storm season runs from September to September. Since 2019 the Netherlands has worked with the Met Office and the Irish weather service Met Éireann, which have been naming storms together since 2015. The KNMI joined this western group because most storms reach the Netherlands from the west.
Each weather service supplies seven names, 21 in total. The letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are missing, in line with international agreements on storm and hurricane names. The order is fixed: Austen, Boelo, Chloe, Dano, Evelyn and so on to Wende.
Austen comes from Ireland. Met Éireann turns ninety this year and chose four names from its own history; Austen refers to the first director of the Irish weather service in 1936. The British Met Office put Shaun the Sheep on the list, the sheep from the animated series.
The Dutch names
Anyone who wanted to could submit a name to the KNMI between 7 April and 7 May 2026. Boelo, the second name of the season, is an East Groningen name, sent in by someone from Groningen whose family has used the name for generations.
Dano was submitted several times as a tribute to Dano Roelvink, a coastal researcher and pioneer of models that calculate storm surges and dune erosion; he retires this year. Gwendolyn was promised as a child that the KNMI would name a storm after her if she did not tidy her room. Jade was submitted by 549 people as a tribute to a young woman who died during the submission period. Olaf is a tribute to a friend of the person who sent it in, who loved storms. Vesna was nominated because of her "southern temperament".
The last Dutch name, Wende, was submitted, according to the KNMI, because of its link with the vanished village of De Westen on Texel, once one of the oldest settlements on the island. Tradition links its disappearance to violence from outside and to storm and water.
How many names are needed
Probably not all of them. In the Netherlands there are storms a few times a year on average. Some seasons have one storm, others nine. According to the KNMI, three names from the group's own list were used last season: Amy, Bram and Chandra, plus Benjamin, which got its name from Météo-France. Chandra, the first Dutch name that season, mainly caused trouble in south-west England, Wales and Northern Ireland at the end of January and did not reach the Netherlands.
Will climate change mean more named storms? According to the KNMI, climate models show no increase in wind strength. Inland, observations even show the wind decreasing, partly because more buildings slow it down. A warmer climate does bring more rain with storms, and on the coast the impact is growing because of the rising sea level, with higher storm surges and waves.
Whether Boelo will come by this season depends on the weather. That he has to wait for Austen first is already settled.