There is a strong chance that the Dutch coast may be hit by a winter storm this weekend – and Ciara is the first named Atlantic storm to head across the North Sea to the Netherlands.

Storm Ciara will first batter Britain and then head to the Netherlands, reaching the coast with winds of up to 100kph on Sunday or Sunday evening.

The storm is ‘not yet a certainty’ and the Netherlands will miss the worst of it, but conditions will at least be very blustery for a few days, Weerplaza meteorologist Wilfred Janssen said.

Dutch weather bureau KNMI is also predicting very strong winds on Sunday but has not yet issued any weather warnings.

Last September, the Netherlands joined forces with British and Irish meteorological agencies to name storms which sweep across the three countries.

‘Storms don’t limit themselves to national borders and so it is logical to give names to such extreme weather conditions,’ said KNMI director Gerard van der Steenhoven at the time.

Storms are named alternately after women and men and the letters Q,U,X,Y and Z are excluded from the list in line with US hurricane conventions.

The Netherlands has contributed several names to the list, including Jan, after Jan Pelleboer, the first Dutch tv and radio weatherman, and Kitty, after Kittie Koperberg, a Jewish librarian who worked for the KNMI who was murdered in the Sobibor death camp in 1943.