Severe Wind Storm late 26th-27th December

gozunda

It is unfortunate that for many locales we simply do not have specific wind speed data.

What I do know that from walking the area today I saw various storm damage including an entire shed roof lifted and lying in another neighbours yard. Mature trees that were busted in two - not uprooted but broken and splintered at mid trunk height. Many many areas experienced similar storm damage.

I believe it was the sustained and oscillating winds SE-SW that did the most damage. it has even many years since I have experienced a similar event. The son has a weather thing attar ached to his PC that has a number of outdoor sensors. He installed it in 2008 and in this case it recorded a high reading of a gust last night since setting it up. To be honest though it was not the gusts that did the damage - it was the sustained and the wind movement that caused the widespread outages and damage to roofs etc.
Those places escaped this kind of damage is most likely due to local topography but does not mean that everyone else is exaggerating. If you didn't have it too bad then good for you

weisses

The thing that made it worse last night imo wasn't the severity in Wind speed (we get almost equal gusts in many systems) but how long it actually took for this storm to pass over

Something that was said earlier on thread

Plus it started from a direction that is unusual for heavy winds S/SE

M.T. Cranium

Maybe we need four warning levels, I am proposing the ones shown on this map. Let me know if I have the boundaries right.



(the orange word is yikes, hard to read)

whiteandlight

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Maybe we need four warning levels, I am proposing the ones shown on this map. Let me know if I have the boundaries right.



(the orange word is yikes, hard to read)

You're on fire, that's hilarious!

whiteandlight

On a separate purely personal note, any chance of a new thread for the new systems coming? I'm due to be travelling to Clare for a few days early next week so I'd like to see the analysis start again (since I'm utterly useless at it myself!)

M.T. Cranium

gozunda wrote: »

It is unfortunate that for many locales we simply do not have specific wind speed data.

What I do know that from walking the area today I saw various storm damage including an entire shed roof lifted and lying in another neighbours yard. Mature trees that were busted in two - not uprooted but broken and splintered at mid trunk height. Many many areas experienced similar storm damage.

I believe it was the sustained and oscillating winds SE-SW that did the most damage. it has even many years since I have experienced a similar event. The son has a weather thing attar ached to his PC that has a number of outdoor sensors. He installed it in 2008 and in this case it recorded a high reading of a gust last night since setting it up. To be honest though it was not the gusts that did the damage - it was the sustained and the wind movement that caused the widespread outages and damage to roofs etc.
Those places escaped this kind of damage is most likely due to local topography but does not mean that everyone else is exaggerating. If you didn't have it too bad then good for you

You're making a very good point there. Local gusts may be quite a bit higher than reported from airport weather stations and in general most (not all) personal weather stations are not even as well exposed as airports.

Severe storm analysis that I've seen (mostly in North America however) indicates that if a grid of official weather stations has wind gusts to X plus or minus 10% then if there's convective activity some place within the grid is likely to have experienced X + 30%. If there is tornadic development of course that goes even higher. If it's the sort of wind field that develops in fair weather then variations are much smaller. Watching the radar last night, it is entirely possible that some 150-200 km/hr gusts occurred in very localized streaks and wind damage inspection is often the only way to estimate that. By simple logic, if most of the trees around a weather station are undamaged at 130 km/hr and somewhere two miles away there is a row of trees blown over, then likely the winds there were considerably higher. Or the explanation may be in soil or ground conditions. "Exposure" at some point just means wind strength, all standard weather stations are relatively well exposed, they tend to avoid valleys because they don't want to spend money on getting less representative information that would then have to be altered for model input.

I can recall here that in Dec 2006 a tornadic wind streak took out thousands of trees to the north of my location but I doubt that gusts exceeded 120 km/hr here and all we had was a few minor branches down. There was a quarter-mile wide swath of destroyed trees through Stanley Park and another one near the east end of the Burrard Inlet, showing that winds must have exceeded 180 at least in those areas, we're talking about 50-60 metre high very substantial trees too.

gozunda

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Maybe we need four warning levels, I am proposing the ones shown on this map. Let me know if I have the boundaries right.



(the orange word is yikes, hard to read)

Like it - moves the he man /didn't happen types into a category of their own
I would suggest maybe moving the "mehs"
- a bit further north

Rikand

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Maybe we need four warning levels, I am proposing the ones shown on this map. Let me know if I have the boundaries right.



(the orange word is yikes, hard to read)

Can we get a small orange circle around athlone for the yikes

Storm 10

So the wind was not strong

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-25527824

Rikand

Rikand wrote: »

Can we get a small orange circle around athlone for the yikes

Yep! Sustained a small bit of damage around here!


and the roof of the dog's kennel flew about 10 metres (it weighs about 10kg), poor dog was briefly homeless.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

Yep! Sustained a small bit of damage around here!


and the roof of the dog's kennel flew about 10 metres (it weighs about 10kg), poor dog was briefly homeless.

envisions dog in sleeping bag , holding cup out ...

Oneiric 3

24hr wind speed animation map based on hourly reports of the controversial storm between about noon yesterday and noon today. Individual images are from XCWeather with colour legend showing Beautfort Force speed based which is a linear estimation based on weather station & airport reports.



Edit, it's actually a 36hr animation up to 6pm today.. doh.

_Whimsical_

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Maybe we need four warning levels, I am proposing the ones shown on this map. Let me know if I have the boundaries right.



(the orange word is yikes, hard to read)

Definitely move the yikes a bit north. Galway got a pretty hard battering last night. I think we might deserve an upgrade to at least a "yikes +" . Wasn't the strongest gust recorded at Mace head?

Thank you by the way for all of your time and expertise,also to the other people who've contributed. I've enjoyed this forum a lot the last few weeks,found the warnings very useful and learned a little too.

Oneiric 3

_Whimsical_ wrote: »

Definitely move the yikes a bit north. Galway got a pretty hard battering last night. I think we might deserve an upgrade to at least a "yikes +" . Wasn't the strongest gust recorded at Mace head?

Sherikin Island, Cork I think recorded the highest gust of 72 kt with 71 at Mace Hd, which as far as I know is on a very exposed headland which would not make it representative of the city or county as a whole. I think the 'Meh' sums up the storm here at least.

maringo

Appreciate all the info coming into the early hours last night while listening to the howling winds in the trees outside. No damage to speak of here.

stooge

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Yep! Sustained a small bit of damage around here!

and the roof of the dog's kennel flew about 10 metres (it weighs about 10kg), poor dog was briefly homeless.

Same here, some damage to trees, boundary walls and sat dish but avoided a lot more by bringing most stuff into the garage last week on the advice of MT and other posters here. Thanks

whats_my_name

I would glady have any number of these winter storms (granted I'm located in the 'where' part of M.T's map) if it meant we could have a summer like 2013 every year!!

downwiththatsor

whats_my_name wrote: »

I would glady have any number of these winter storms (granted I'm located in the 'where' part of M.T's map) if it meant we could have a summer like 2013 every year!!

Agree 100%, i realised that sunshine and not rainfall is the key as valentia has exceeded last years rainfall total already but the Global Solar Radiation although not much over the mean is well up on 2012.
http://www.met.ie/climate/monthly-data.asp?Num=2275
Will take winter storms any day also. Have not heard of human casulaties in Ireland as a result of this storm thankfully but have seen a fair bit of damage here all the same.

_Whimsical_

whats_my_name wrote: »

I would glady have any number of these winter storms (granted I'm located in the 'where' part of M.T's map) if it meant we could have a summer like 2013 every year!!

Usually I'd agree, I love a rainy night. However only last week a 5year old died in Galway after her mothers car was blown off the road. I think I'd prefer milder events at unsociable hours so we can all enjoy them from the safety of our beds.

M.T. Cranium

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

Sherikin Island, Cork I think recorded the highest gust of 72 kt with 71 at Mace Hd, which as far as I know is on a very exposed headland which would not make it representative of the city or county as a whole. I think the 'Meh' sums up the storm here at least.

Where's here 4 u?

maquiladora

This would be another windy day for the southwest on the ECM.

M.T. Cranium

Make it stop !!!

gordongekko

How's Mondays storm looking? Will it be as bad as the last two?

gozunda

Rte radio just now - Galway Bay Registered as Hurricane Force 1
during storm

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/winds-reach-hurricane-force-at-galway-harbour-1.1638948

Oneiric 3

gozunda wrote: »

Rte radio just now - Galway Bay Registered as Hurricane Force 1
during storm

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/winds-reach-hurricane-force-at-galway-harbour-1.1638948

Top gust recorded during the storm at the NUIG station was 53 knots, yet a full blown Cat 1 hurricane recorded at the harbour, a 15 min walk away?

http://weather.nuigalway.ie/weatherData.php

maquiladora

gordongekko wrote: »

How's Mondays storm looking? Will it be as bad as the last two?

Not at all. Just looks like a windy day with gales on the coast. Standard winter stuff.

Clonmel1000

I'm not denying for a second the severe nature of Wednesdays storm. But I feel in this age of social media and 24hr news coverage there is little doubt that certain events are being hyped or ramped up for maximum effect. This is not a criticism just an observation.

Weathering

gozunda wrote: »

Rte radio just now - Galway Bay Registered as Hurricane Force 1
during storm

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/winds-reach-hurricane-force-at-galway-harbour-1.1638948

Hurricane force gust. Third time it has happened this month at mace head.
Not comparable to a hurricane in terms of mean speeds, far from it

fryup

whats_my_name wrote: »

I would glady have any number of these winter storms (granted I'm located in the 'where' part of M.T's map) if it meant we could have a summer like 2013 every year!!

was the summer that great?

yes i know we had a scorcher (unbearable for some) of a fortnight..but apart from that i thought it was nothing out of the ordinary

maquiladora

fryup wrote: »

was the summer that great?

yes i know we had a scorcher (unbearable for some) of a fortnight..but apart from that i thought it was nothing out of the ordinary

Warmest July on record at stations in the west, southwest and midlands. All other stations had the warnest July for 7-30 years. Highest mean monthly temperature for Valentia since records began in 1893.

About as good as you can get for a country like Ireland that doesnt get months of settled weather. Could be a long time before we see another warm spell like it.