Austen was named before it arrived

The Met Office named Storm Austen on Tuesday morning, two days before it was due¹; Ouest-France calls it the first storm of the autumn⁴. An Atlantic low is expected to deepen rapidly as the jet stream feeds it, and to cross southern Britain late on Thursday and through Friday morning^1,2.

The British warnings. On Wednesday the forecaster raised an amber wind warning for the whole of Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and parts of West Devon, inside a wider yellow warning from Thursday evening into Friday². “Winds gusts could potentially reach 60-70 mph for a time,” said deputy chief forecaster Chris Bulmer². Rain adds to it: 20–30 mm in many places, more on high ground in the west¹. The Met Office expects winds to ease through Friday afternoon, with more unsettled weather and possibly further warnings at the weekend².

The French warnings. Météo-France’s bulletin for Thursday, issued at 16:01 on Wednesday, has 14 départements in yellow and none in orange or red³. Wind runs from Brittany and the Channel coast to Var, the Alpes-Maritimes and Corsica; Finistère, Morbihan, Loire-Atlantique and Pas-de-Calais are also yellow for rain and flooding, and Gard is still yellow for river floods³. The rain-flood yellow runs from 02:00, with a lull expected between 14:00 and 18:00⁵. In Loire-Atlantique the wind warning starts at 21:00, and Ouest-France quotes a Météo-France forecaster saying all coasts from Brittany to Hauts-de-France and the Atlantic seaboard will see wind⁴.

The constructive reading. Nothing in either bulletin is extraordinary yet: an amber in one corner of England, yellows in France^2,3. That is the system working as designed. A name and a colour two days early give councils time to clear drains, ferry operators time to reschedule and you time to tie down the garden furniture. The expensive storms are the ones nobody was told about.