Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch inventor of the microscope, will therefore have to wait for some attention. Antoni tops the list of storm names, but that list hasn’t yet been used this storm season.
What’s up with that?
Storms don’t happen by accident. This has to do with the jet stream: a very powerful wind at an altitude of about ten kilometers. If the temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator is greater, the jet stream becomes more powerful. RTL meteorologist Marc de Jong explains: “If you compare it to a flag: when the wind is blowing very hard it is taut, when the wind is not blowing it starts to twist. When the jet stream weakens, it twists. The effect you see then is that the cold and the heat are intensifying.”
But due to climate change, the jet stream hasn’t been very strong this fall. “As a result, the temperature difference is smaller, and in recent years it has become more common to experience an autumn without significant thunderstorms,” says De Jong.
Scientific research is currently underway to determine if the likelihood of storms is decreasing due to climate change. “The North Pole is warming much faster now. Not quite at the equator. The storm jet engine is weakening.”
Even bad weather cannot be immediately called a storm. To speak of a storm, wind force 9 must be present at one of the measuring stations in the Netherlands for at least one hour. De Jong: “In early November, wind force 9 was measured on Vlieland, but it didn’t last an hour.”
Are the storms coming?
Storm season will take some more time; it consists of meteorological autumn and winter. Meteorological winter begins in less than a week. An autumn without storms doesn’t even mean a winter without storms, on the contrary: there is a good chance that we will have one or more storms in winter. “The jet stream does not weaken permanently. In winter there can still be a very powerful phase,” says De Jong.
According to De Jong, the center of gravity of the storms is in February. Storm Eunice, for example, occurred during the winter in February. De Jong therefore considers the possibility that there will be no storm very small. “That would be really great.”
