By Paul Homewood
Storm of the century? Storm in a teacup, more like!
Britain is facing further mayhem over the next 48 hours in the wake of Storm Ciara which battered Britain with winds of up to 100mph causing widespread flooding and travel chaos.
Hundreds of flights were grounded, motorways and main roads shut and trains cancelled and delayed in the wake of a storm that threatens further disruption.
The Met Office warned that ‘exceptional’ gusts of up to 70mph would strike again on Monday and issued snow and ice warnings for large swathes of northern England and almost all of Scotland. The south of England will also be hit for a second day by heavy winds.
Gusts of 97mph were recorded at the Needles off the Isle of Wight while Manchester Airport was buffeted by winds of up to 86mph.
Helen Roberts, a senior meteorologist at the Met Office, said that Storm Ciara threatened to be the worst this century, rivalled only by the 19th December 2013 storm that caused widespread power cuts.
“It’s definitely the biggest storm in seven years and in terms of area affected it’s probably the biggest this century,” she said.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/09/storm-ciara-hits-britain-mph-wind-rain-travel/
As usual the Met Office have exaggerated the power of the storm by using gust speeds at exposed headlands and the like:
The Needles are tall lumps of rock off the coast of the Isle of Wight, and nearly always appear near the top of wind speed lists. Similarly with Capel Curig and Lake Vyrnway, both high up in Snowdonia, and Aberdaron, at the top of cliffs at the tip of the Llyn Peninsula.
The Needles
The wind speeds recorded at these places bear no resemblance to those at places where people actually live and travel.
The Met Office don’t even seem to have bothered listing representative lowland and inland sites, something they used to in the past. But I have pieced together a cross section from the Met Office:
I have picked Bournemouth because of its proximity to the Isle of Wight and coastal position, and Manchester (Rostherne) where a high gust was recorded at the airport.
Top gusts reached 60mph in Manchester and 54mph in Bournemouth. Sustained wind speeds however ranged between 31 and 34mph at the three sites, putting them into the Near Gale category:
I notice that the Met Office is still forecasting ‘exceptional’ gusts of up to 70mph today. I presume they mean gusts of that today will be few and far between, rather than meaning that a gust of 70mph itself is “exceptional”!
In fact the Met forecast is for sustained wind speeds of between 20 and 25mph at worst for inland sites, and up to 30 mph for coastal sites with the exception of Lands End and the Western Isles. In other words a Fresh Breeze for most of the country:
So what about this nonsense about the “Storm of the Century”?
If this meant to be the 21stC, all I can say is the Met Office must have a very good crystal ball! But if they mean the last 100 years, the claim is patent nonsense.
In fact we only have to go back two years for claims of 100mph winds, when Eleanor blew by:
Two years before that, the Telegraph absurdly claimed “record breaking winds” from Imogen, which reached 96mph on the Needles.
And in 2013, the St Jude’s Day storm saw winds of 99mph on the Needles:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/past-uk-weather-events
As the Met Office rightly pointed out, that storm was not in the same category as the Great Storm of 1987. Nor was it in the same league as the Burns Day storm in 1990, when even inland sites across a wide swathe of England experienced gusts of between 80 and 90mph.
Finally, a look at the Met Office page for record gusts at low-level sites shows that every district has seen gusts of 100mph and over since 1969. Some are exposed sites, such as the Needles and St Bees, but most are genuine, representative sites.
All the records, bar one, were set prior to 2000:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-extremes
This episode highlights how the Met Office has lost all sense of objectivity, and instead are intent on hyping every bit of bad weather to play to their climate agenda.
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February 10, 2020 at 10:24AM
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