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FOX Weather is often asked “do winter storms get names?” The answer is no.

The National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) do not recognize or use names given to winter storms by media outlets or private organizations in official forecasts.

The National Weather Service issues detailed forecasts and alerts to communicate specific impacts from winter storms, but we do not name them.

– NWS spokesperson Marissa Anderson

Unlike hurricanes, which are well-defined systems with a single clear center, winter storms are often broad, unorganized, and can have multiple centers that shift or redevelop. A single winter system can produce vastly different conditions across a region—such as a blizzard in one area and just rain in another—making a single name potentially misleading to the public.

The names you may have seen were developed without collaboration or consultation with official global weather authorities like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) or the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

Official agencies argue that naming winter storms is driven more by social media needs, such as creating hashtags, and marketing rather than sound meteorological science. The NWS has advised its forecast offices to avoid these names because they can create confusion, as the names are not used on official government warnings or safety bulletins.

In a statement to FOX Weather, the National Weather Service said, “The NWS will name tropical systems, but does not do this unilaterally – these names are from a list established by an international committee of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization.

Spokesperson Marissa Anderson told us, “This naming is contingent upon well defined and universal criteria (eg: an organized area of low pressure with top winds of at least 39 mph). Names are given to these systems because they are discrete and naming provides a common link as these storms traverse international boundaries and multiple languages, and to distinguish between multiple storms that may threaten a region concurrently. Unlike tropical systems, winter storms are more diverse with impacts that evolve throughout the storm’s life.”