By Paul Homewood
Ex Hurricane Ophelia has now rapidly weakened and is moving away from the UK.
It has been reported as the worst storm in Ireland since Hurricane Debbie in 1961, but there the similarity ends. As we shall see, Debbie was a different beast entirely.
As we can see below, Debbie brought gusts of more than 100 mph across much of Ireland, even at inland sites.
By contrast, Ophelia only reached 73 knots, or 84 mph.
A run through of the wind speed data from the Irish Met Office gives a flukey looking reading of 70 knots at Cork, equivalent to 80 mph, but nothing anywhere else more than 65 mph, other than 76 mph at Shannon.
10-minute sustained speeds are also well down with Ophelia. For instance, at Shannon they peaked at 40 knots yesterday, or 46 mph. By contrast, Debbie brought sustained speeds of 69 mph.
The UK Met Office have been reporting gusts of up to 80 mph as the storm tracked through Scotland, but these tend to be at exposed places, and certainly are nothing unusual for that part of the world.
Joe Bastardi included this video in his Saturday Summary last week, which compares Ophelia and Debbie.
What is striking is that they started in a similar fashion as Cat 3 hurricanes, before suddenly veering north.
Joe also mentions Hurricane Faith in 1966. Although it missed Ireland and Scotland, what made this particular storm so remarkable was it was still at hurricane strength to the north of Scotland.
As Joe rightly states, history counters hysteria.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
October 17, 2017 at 02:06PM
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