Strange wind last night

GavinH

Hi all,

I live 16 miles west of Cork City, between Ballncollig and Macroom. During the night we (myself and my wife) were woken up by the noise of a very strong wind. This effected large objects on the East side of the house, the wind which lasted only about 15 minutes managed to blow some quite heavy objects around the place. Sorry don't know the exact time. So just wondering if anybody else experienced anything last night.

Gav

Iancar29

Could of been a mini tornado!! :rolleyes:

gbee

Every possibility it was a Tornado. We do get touchdowns and damage reported is often dismissed as just wind or storm damage.

Did you notice the pressure differential, a sort of shortness of breath?

ch750536

GavinH wrote: »

Hi all,

I live 16 miles west of Cork City, between Ballncollig and Macroom. During the night we (myself and my wife) were woken up by the noise of a very strong wind. This effected large objects on the East side of the house, the wind which lasted only about 15 minutes managed to blow some quite heavy objects around the place. Sorry don't know the exact time. So just wondering if anybody else experienced anything last night.

Gav

Not a tornado, squall perhaps?

GavinH

TBH I was half asleep, was tempted to get up and take a look around, but tiredness won out.

M.T. Cranium

Had a look at the data from overnight and satellite imagery, would guess this happened between midnight and 0100 hours, as winds aloft were very strong then, clouds (from infra-red) were moving fast also, surface winds from reporting stations not especially strong (NNW 20-30 mph) but given the hilly topography to your north there, this might have been a lee wave that forms when the air is forced up and down and forms a wave train downstream from high ground. You may live in an area prone to these lee waves or it may just have been a freakish one-off sort of a thing. This was probably not associated with convective cloud, just a local wind channelling effect. These lee waves can sometimes double the wind speeds being experienced at other nearby locations. Is there a fairly steep hill to your north?

yellowlabrador

i heard and felt it too here in dunmanway. At about 12.30 am, the wind picked up and some quite large gusts, rattled the house. I thought at the time that maybe we were heading for an unexpected storm. There was also a big downdraft in the chimneys. The wind seemed strong enough to blow things around. We are surrounded by hills to the west and north, this wind seemed west.

ch750536

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave

Intersting reading

gbee

Usually a turbulent horizontal vortex is generated around the first trough, the so called rotor.

hmmm.

GavinH

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Had a look at the data from overnight and satellite imagery, would guess this happened between midnight and 0100 hours, as winds aloft were very strong then, clouds (from infra-red) were moving fast also, surface winds from reporting stations not especially strong (NNW 20-30 mph) but given the hilly topography to your north there, this might have been a lee wave that forms when the air is forced up and down and forms a wave train downstream from high ground. You may live in an area prone to these lee waves or it may just have been a freakish one-off sort of a thing. This was probably not associated with convective cloud, just a local wind channelling effect. These lee waves can sometimes double the wind speeds being experienced at other nearby locations. Is there a fairly steep hill to your north?

Thanks MT, yes indeed i live in a small bit of a valley. There is a Hill to both the North and South. These are hills and not mountain, so I quess some sort of tunnelling is likely.

Gav

GavinH

Thanks to everyone that replied.

Midas Touch

I am in ballincollig, co cork (living in typical suburbia!) and I too was woken by this extremely strong wind. The wind was stronger north side of the house. I thought it was really strange as it only lasted a short while. I reckon it was about 1am.

Su Campu

It's interesting to note that there were speed maxima of both 850hPa and 300hPa winds in the Cork area at the time. The image below (00UTC)shows the arrival of a 300hPa jet streak (gold vectors, the larger the arrow the stronger the wind) over-riding the strongest of the 850hPa winds (green vectors) just behind the passing surface cold front. The wind at Cork Airport also picked up around midnight, so the stable airmass behind the passing cold front and strong speedshear with height probably caused enhanced lee rotors to develop.

Cork Airport
Time
2330 W 9kts
0000 WNW 15kts
0030 NW 17kts
0100 WNW 19kts

GavinH

Thanks Su

eskimocat

Interesting to read what has gone before. My Mum was telling me that the other night that her letter box at the rear of the house rattled so badly she got a bit nervous. Being from the Donegal coast she is well used to wind and would rarely remark on anything like that even during some spectacular storms. I wondered if it might have been something like a mini tornado but she reported that the bin near the door was untouched. I wonder now if it was something more along the lines of what Su mentions above.

bogman

Cork airport is 2.5 miles line of sight from here, remember hearing the wind gusting and thinking something was brewing, didnt last long and I went to bed shortly after

What I recorded

Su Campu

bogman wrote: »

Cork airport is 2.5 miles line of sight from here, remember hearing the wind gusting and thinking something was brewing, didnt last long and I went to bed shortly after

What I recorded

Thanks for the graph. Could you post another one with temp, dewpoint and pressure? That will show the passage of the cold front and any other fohn effects, etc. (not that I'd expect there to be)

vibe666

maybe it was the beans? :pac:

sorry, been hanging out in AH too much.

bogman

Su Campu wrote: »

Could you post another one with temp, dewpoint and pressure?

There you are Su Campu, ur welcome

Su Campu

Thanks for that bogman. There doesn't seem to be anything of note there, just a passing cold front.

spideog7

Microburst perhaps?

Don't know if we're susceptible to the sort of conditions that cause them, heard of them over here first, amazed at how localised the damage can be.