Storm Éowyn!
Cannot really categorize this post except, well, "using names from Tolkien"?
Sending best wishes to everyone in the UK and Ireland!
ETA: Marcel posted on it as well and has All the Information on how the list of storm names is generated by agencies in the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands: and not only are there MORE Tolkien names, it was the Netherlands office that picked Éowyn. (Am not listing the other names because you should go read Marcel’s post—which is part of his great blog!).
But I also admit to being gobsmacked to see headlines about “Storm Éowyn”!
Did the meterological list of names for major storms in the UK suddenly expand to include characters from Tolkien’s legendarium?
One article I read actually had a parenthetical phonological explanation of how to pronoun “Éowyn”!
OK, having moused around online, it seems that in the US only tropical storms/hurricanes get names (and apparently it’s not determined by the National Hurricane Center but by the World Meterological Organization), and the sexist habit of only using women’s names ended in 1979.
The need for names is explained by the fact that lots of tropical storms emerge (more so these days with climate catastrophe ongoing!), so it helps to distinguish between them in information released to the public (although that may become moot in future given the christofascists’ claim that NOAA is the leading purveyor of false information about climate change and should be shut down, carved up, and sold to the cannibal capitalists (am reading Nancy Fraser’s excellent book, Cannibal Capitalism, and, yeah).
So that’s probably why it’s “Storm Éowyn” because it’s not a tropical storm/hurricane.
I did a short piece on this - and funnily enough, it was the Dutch who "came up" with Éoywn, not the Brits, as you would assume :)
https://steadyhq.com/en/thetolkienist/posts/c1cb4eec-fcae-4b00-b98c-823cda1d94ef
I know the Weather Channel started naming bad storm in the US, but that's only a Weather Channel thing. It doesn't carry over onto any other reporting service, though sometimes it's picked up by local media. The only "official" names are those given to tropical storms and hurricanes.