Wind / Rainfall warnings :Potentially very windy Weds 18th Dec 2019

Danno

revsperminute wrote: »

+1 On the remove the colour coding of warnings.

They are ridiculous and not fit for purpose...

+1

My proposed warning system:

Weather Watch: Issued a few days in advance giving "heads up" in advance of an event that may or may not happen - gives people time to take some precautionary action. Qualify the watch with a % chance. For example: There is a 60% chance of high winds, heavy rain, low temperatures, etc... in 72hrs/on Sunday...

Weather Advisory: Most suitable for outdoor activity and coastal events overall. Aimed at: "if you're taking the boat out, driving a high-sided vehicle, climbing a mountain, working in a forest or up slating a roof the advice is for strong winds which may present very localised challenging conditions" Again qualify this with say a 75% chance of this effecting areas within 30 miles of the northwest coast, etc...

Weather Warning: More in-tune with the general population to encourage deferral of non-necessary travel or activity outdoors, or in the case of some weather types (summer heat, dense fog) to take extra precautions. Again qualify this with a 40% chance of this effecting say the inland southeast and south midlands.

Weather Alert: More like the current Red Alert. Warrants closure of schools, public buildings, etc... For the ease of local authorities I would keep the counties system here in case you'd have some twit of a school principal 2 miles east of Youghal saying well, we're not south, we're southeast and we're not closing.

Thoughts?

Storm 10

SleetAndSnow wrote: »

Really? It's salthill, it floods a lot, any weather warning they should put out the sandbags and close off the roads. It's land reclaimed from the sea and an area that floods without high waves. I 100% blame Galway city council for that. They should monitor the area to ensure it's alright. Met eireann can't be checking every single aspect of the country at once. They weren't given the warning at 8 they were given an "orange" warning at 8 and official reports look like it may have just been orange or else below. They had an advisory and then a yellow warning, which salthill often floods in aswell. No excuses for that.

Council were on local radio this morning there was not going to be a high tide with the storm and they had no indication there would be a storm surge of over 7 feet, if this storm hit the East coast boards would shut down and ME would have to go into hiding but sure its only the West.

On another note the Freight Ferry servicing the Aran Islands broke her moorings and is caught between rocks and a pier at Galway docks not good coming up to Christmas or any time.

Mortelaro

Why are they not a problem in the UK?

flazio

The old "gale warnings" used to work just fine. The higher the gale warning the more action to be taken.
Met Eireann could have issued a warning that winds could get up to gale force 3 or 4 or whatever the possibility was, then people on the coast would take heed.

i have no interest in GL’s personalising BS. I’d be better off paying more heed to the muck on my boot.

I’ve made my points. I’ll go through them here one more time.

1. Warnings are understood as action advisories, not windspeed indicators. Doesn’t matter if the windspeed number hits a “yellow” speed or a “red” speed, the wider public knows “take care” “examine & decide” “seek shelter”. The whys can get debated here.

2. Workers do not have the luxury of being able to decide their actions, and warnings are the only way they get to argue their case for bad weather against sociopathic bosses.

3. I advocate a bias towards giving warnings, and the narrowing of areas to townships instead of counties. This is because the lesser evil is being indoors when it is safe when compared to outdoors when it is not.

4. I feel that those who think warnings should not exist because they don’t affect them are a danger to the rest pf us who cannot judge for ourselves, either by coercion of employment or lack of education. This goes for anyone who quotes “common sense” and “personal responsibility” as reasons why the media must be silent. The wider “personal responsibility” approach is used to excuse a lot of inaction far outside Weather’s remit, and is every bit a danger to us all.

I will not make those points again. My apologies to those discussing the current weather. Best wishes.

SleetAndSnow

Storm 10 wrote: »

Council were on local radio this morning there was not going to be a high tide with the storm and they had no indication there would be a storm surge of over 7 feet, if this storm hit the East coast boards would shut down and ME would have to go into hiding but sure its only the West.

On another note the Freight Ferry servicing the Aran Islands broke her moorings and is caught between rocks and a pier at Galway docks not good coming up to Christmas or any time.

Good thing i'm not in the east, im in the south which often gets neglected too, and yes there would have been more attention if it was the east but that doesn't change the facts.

It is salthill, it is reclaimed land, it floods basically every yellow warning nearly. It should be automatically closed when an alert is issued since it floods from under, not over the walls. It should at least be monitored every single alert, ridiculous that it isn't. No indication there wasn't going to be a high tide is total lies, that comes with every storm a small bit which is enough to flood salthill, especially when it was coming from the south this time. They are trying to cover themselves, not working.

endainoz

[Deleted User] wrote: »

i have no interest in GL’s personalising BS. I’d be better off paying more heed to the muck on my boot.

I’ve made my points. I’ll go through them here one more time.

1. Warnings are understood as action advisories, not windspeed indicators. Doesn’t matter if the windspeed number hits a “yellow” speed or a “red” speed, the wider public knows “take care” “examine & decide” “seek shelter”. The whys can get debated here.

2. Workers do not have the luxury of being able to decide their actions, and warnings are the only way they get to argue their case for bad weather against sociopathic bosses.

3. I advocate a bias towards giving warnings, and the narrowing of areas to townships instead of counties. This is because the lesser evil is being indoors when it is safe when compared to outdoors when it is not.

4. I feel that those who think warnings should not exist because they don’t affect them are a danger to the rest pf us who cannot judge for ourselves, either by coercion of employment or lack of education. This goes for anyone who quotes “common sense” and “personal responsibility” as reasons why the media must be silent. The wider “personal responsibility” approach is used to excuse a lot of inaction far outside Weather’s remit, and is every bit a danger to us all.

I will not make those points again. My apologies to those discussing the current weather. Best wishes.

Yeah your not going to get much support going against one of the main weather posters on boards. Nice storey though, well put together!!

sryanbruen

Here's the full storm comparison table updated to include Storm Elsa based on maximum gusts (kph) but again Elsa's gusts are provisional - I will make changes if necessary. As usual, I will give highest 10-minute mean wind speeds next month when the data comes in like for Atiyah. Barney from November 2015 was added to the table per a request on Twitter since the last update on here.

New visitors, the boxes are colour coded on the warning system like yellow is for yellow warranted gusts (90-110 kph), orange is for orange warranted gusts (111-130 kph) and red is for red warranted gusts (131+ kph) whilst green is for no warning.

Using M.T.'s storm index from the Atiyah thread, I get an index of 39 for Elsa based on this data which actually puts it bang in line with Atiyah (and Hergen from December 2011).

Saying all the above, Elsa had the joint highest gust at Knock Airport with Storm Ali since Eleanor whilst Mace Head's max gust was the highest since Ali.



Data from Met Éireann.

SleetAndSnow

Just goes to show that darwin was, and always will be, a beast. Great job sryan

Snow Garden

Great table Sryanbruen. Thanks again.

I am curious - why is Belmullet so much stronger than Atiyah (115 v 101) and yet Newport is so much less than Atiyah (113 v 128)?
I mean they are so close to each other...I guess that is nature of weather/gusts.

Atiyah was a lot stronger than I thought but Lorenzo hardly deserves to be on the table.

Graces7

For this thanks. Saved me the time.. Although I DID ask specifically about insurance which he evaded!

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

I think your anger has nothing at all to do with Met Éireann but more to do with a general anti-anything-government. Bringing up health and homelessness has nothing to do with anything.

And it's also pretty clear that you're one of those who looks for any excuse to get off work. You're peeved you had to go work. Most people on here are "workers" too, so I'm not sure why you seem to see yourself as a special case.

Change job.

As for Galway County and City Councils, etc. They should know better than anyone when there is a threat to Salthill, knowing well in advance when high tide is and matching that with the general weather forecast. They are as guilty as anyone for allowing people to park where they did, knowing 24 hours in advance that strong southerly winds were forecast for the time of high tide.

Graces7

Snow Garden wrote: »

Great table Sryanbruen. Thanks again.

I am curious - why is Belmullet so much stronger than Atiyah (115 v 101) and yet Newport is so much less (113 v 128)?
I mean they are so close to each other...I guess that is nature of weather/gusts.

Belmullet is coastal, and a very exposed coastal; Newport not coastal. I would not describe them as very close to each other

Gaoth Laidir

Deleted User wrote: »

i have no interest in GL’s personalising BS. I’d be better off paying more heed to the muck on my boot.

I’ve made my points. I’ll go through them here one more time.

1. Warnings are understood as action advisories, not windspeed indicators. Doesn’t matter if the windspeed number hits a “yellow” speed or a “red” speed, the wider public knows “take care” “examine & decide” “seek shelter”. The whys can get debated here.

2. Workers do not have the luxury of being able to decide their actions, and warnings are the only way they get to argue their case for bad weather against sociopathic bosses.

Again, I think your issue is not with the weather...

3. I advocate a bias towards giving warnings, and the narrowing of areas to townships instead of counties. This is because the lesser evil is being indoors when it is safe when compared to outdoors when it is not.

I wasn't aware that we have townships in Ireland. In any case, do you really think it's feasible to have warnings down to a local level? People can't properly follow a general warning as it is. Do you think they'd really read down a long list of towns/parishes to see if their own is on it? Ridiculous.

I do agree, though, that it could not hurt to have at least show a warning map on their TV bulletins similar to what they have on their website and Twitter. At least people will get the overall jist of the spread of conditions instead of purely reading text.

4. I feel that those who think warnings should not exist because they don’t affect them are a danger to the rest pf us who cannot judge for ourselves, either by coercion of employment or lack of education. This goes for anyone who quotes “common sense” and “personal responsibility” as reasons why the media must be silent. The wider “personal responsibility” approach is used to excuse a lot of inaction far outside Weather’s remit, and is every bit a danger to us all.

I will not make those points again. My apologies to those discussing the current weather. Best wishes.

Who exactly are these people whose thinkings you are so afraid of? You can surely judge for yourself when you hear a weather forecast. We all survived perfectly well before the time of coloured warnings, so again, it seems the snowflake generation want to lash out when their favourite social media pages don't go mad over a bit of wind.

endainoz wrote: »

Yeah your not going to get much support going against one of the main weather posters on boards. Nice storey though, well put together!!

Maybe if you read WHAT is being posted instead of WHO is posting it then you may not make that comment.

Gaoth Laidir

Snow Garden wrote: »

Great table Sryanbruen. Thanks again.

I am curious - why is Belmullet so much stronger than Atiyah (115 v 101) and yet Newport is so much less than Atiyah (113 v 128)?
I mean they are so close to each other...I guess that is nature of weather/gusts.

Atiyah was a lot stronger than I thought but Lorenzo hardly deserves to be on the table.

Au contraire, I think it definetely should be there as it highlights the level of unwarranted hyperbole that the media put out there in advance.

Snow Garden

Graces7 wrote: »

Belmullet is coastal, and a very exposed coastal; Newport not coastal. I would not describe them as very close to each other

You are missing my point. I know where they are.

Newport and Belmullet had roughly the same gusts last night (Newport 113 and Belmullet 115).
However in Atiyah, Newport was way higher than Belmullet (Newport 128 v Belmullet 101).

John.Icy

SleetAndSnow wrote: »

Just goes to show that darwin was, and always will be, a beast. Great job sryan

Darwin was incredible and it always frustrates me when people in the East only talk about Ophelia. Ophelia was nothing in the East compared to Darwin.

If you want to talk about late warnings then Darwin is a far better example. The red was rather late (the storm path was very unpredictable to be fair). It hit much of the east from 3-5pm so rush hours basically. Nothing had shut down, all schools open. Was madness. Took my mother over an hour to make a 10 minute home-from-school journey, trees everywhere. It did immense damage to trees in S.Kildare. I was in Dublin for it and tbh it was a blink and you'll miss it, despite the orange level gusts in D9. Didn't notice many trees down but back home trees are everywhere so you'd of course get far more felled.

Great Storm. No deaths. Which I think is why it is largely forgotten. Ophelia had 3 deaths and that was always used as a metric for severity.

Sidenote: Dublin Airport is very UNwindy. My nearest station and it doesn't surprise me. Strong wind is rare as round these parts.

Gaoth Laidir

Snow Garden wrote: »

You are missing my point. I know where they are.

Newport and Belmullet had roughly the same gusts last night (Newport 113 and Belmullet 115).
However in Atiyah, Newport was way higher than Belmullet (Newport 128 v Belmullet 101).

It's probably due to local exposure. Yesterday winds were from the south. During Atiyah they were from the northwest.

Storm 10

I have never seen Salthill flood on a Yellow warning its just a Gale of which we have many it only floods on higher warnings when there is a high tide with a storm surge, the tide last night was a low enough tide but there was a 7 foot storm surge of which there was never a mention of, this morning ten business premises in Salthill and around the Docks along with 50 cars are damaged if they knew about this they would have been sandbagged and the prom and carparks closed.

It is salthill, it is reclaimed land, it floods basically every yellow warning nearly. It should be automatically closed when an alert is issued since it floods from under, not over the walls. It should at least be monitored every single alert, ridiculous that it isn't. No indication there wasn't going to be a high tide is total lies, that comes with every storm a small bit which is enough to flood salthill, especially when it was coming from the south this time. They are trying to cover themselves, not working.

Xenji

Snow Garden wrote: »

Great table Sryanbruen. Thanks again.

I am curious - why is Belmullet so much stronger than Atiyah (115 v 101) and yet Newport is so much less than Atiyah (113 v 128)?
I mean they are so close to each other...I guess that is nature of weather/gusts.

Atiyah was a lot stronger than I thought but Lorenzo hardly deserves to be on the table.

Since they moved where the weather station is in Belmullet it is less exposed to the elements, up till 2012 it was on Blacksods lighthouse.

The station in Furnace is halfway between Castlebar and Newport and is on quite flat land jutting out into Lough Furnace.

Plus Belmullet is nearly over an hour away by car from Newport, 68 kilometers.

Storm 10

Very angry Galway Harbour Master about this storm

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/galway-harbourmaster-criticises-forecasters-as-cargo-ship-hits-rocks-during-storm-elsa-971346.html

Snow Garden

Storm 10 wrote: »

I have never seen Salthill flood on a Yellow warning.

Have you proof of this? The warnings are only recent.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=112057432&postcount=410

John.Icy

Storm 10 wrote: »

Very angry Galway Harbour Master about this storm

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/galway-harbourmaster-criticises-forecasters-as-cargo-ship-hits-rocks-during-storm-elsa-971346.html

''The city’s emergency plan was invoked after southerly winds forecast at 40 to 45 knows hit 73 knots, and there was a sea surge over quays in the docks and in Salthill.''

73 knots = 135km/h, didn't happen.
45 knots = 83km/h, nearly 30km/h below the limit of a yellow warning. Coastal parts of the west were warned against higher, Salthill is coastal and in the west.

I totally understand the frustration and the flooding was bad and there can be grievance at the poor colour system BUT that article is pulling numbers from thin air.

malinheader

Storm 10 wrote: »

Very angry Galway Harbour Master about this storm

https://www.breakingnew

Storm 10

On my home station last night I recorded winds of 125.9kmh Galway Harbour have their own weather station at the harbour entrance and its wide open to the wind so saying it did not happen is very disingenuous

John.Icy;112058117]''The city’s emergency plan was invoked after southerly
winds forecast at 40 to 45 knows hit 73 knots, and there was a sea surge over
quays in the docks and in Salthill.''

73 knots = 135km/h, didn't happen.
45 knots = 83km/h, nearly 30km/h below the limit of a yellow warning. Coastal
parts of the west were warned against higher, Salthill is coastal and in the
west

coillsaille

Just curious why Met Eir are saying highest gust was 117km/hr at Knock according to RTE?

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2019/1219/1102064-storms-roads-weather/

I thought there was 126km/hr recorded at Mace Head.

Villain

no-one mentioned what HARMONIE was showing, would be interesting to know what it had forecast..

Met Éireann often share the charts on twitter during a storm but none shared this time. A consistent sharing of the HARMONIE model charts for any warning would be helpful.

Storm 10

https://galwaybayfm.ie/galway-bay-fm-news-desk/mayor-of-galway-questions-warning-protocols-ahead-of-last-nights-storm/

SleetAndSnow

Storm 10 wrote: »

https://galwaybayfm.ie/galway-bay-fm-news-desk/mayor-of-galway-questions-warning-protocols-ahead-of-last-nights-storm/

https://twitter.com/MetEireann/status/1206900659934633984/photo/1

Issued a full day before the storm. ''Strongest in coastal areas'. They should have been prepared the moment they saw that.

Then this

https://twitter.com/MetEireann/status/1207253385839333381

Updated to say specifically west and south west will have strong winds, specifically coastal areas. Again, should automatrically prepare salthill for situations like this. Its very prone to floods.

https://twitter.com/MetEireann/status/1207336521088618496

'Potentially stormy along south western/western coasts'

+ a few more. They had plenty of warning a storm was coming and the fact the west was mentioned quite a bit, should have known orange was coming. Charts were, to be fair, chopping and changing quite a bit in the build up to the event but galway city council trying to pin all the blame on ME is utterly ridiculous.

Gaoth Laidir

Xenji wrote: »

Since they moved where the weather station is in Belmullet it is less exposed to the elements, up till 2012 it was on Blacksods lighthouse.

That's not correct. It's still at the same location it's been since 1956. At that time it replaced the one at Blacksod.

In 2012 it became automated, but it's still at the same site.

The station opened in September 1956. It replaced the station at Blacksod Lighthouse, 10 miles to the SW, which was run by the Sweeney family. It was from Blacksod that the observation, which finally determined the date of the D-Day landings in June 1944, emanated. The station is regarded as being particularly important because of its location on the western fringe of Europe. In 2012, the manual station was replaced by an AWS situated on the same site

Streeview

John.Icy

Storm 10 wrote: »

On my home station last night I recorded winds of 125.9kmh Galway Harbour have their own weather station at the harbour entrance and its wide open to the wind so saying it did not happen is very disingenuous

And if a technical report comes in for 135km/h then I'll hold my hands up for being dismissive. Till then, 125km/h at Mace will go down as the strongest gust (which is what you also got).

I tried Galway Bay buoy but they only seem to have mean wind speeds on display. If you know of elsewhere onshore to check do let me know as 135km/h would be very impressive. Some of the wow stations in the region only have rainfall stats.