TECHNICAL DISCUSSION - Storm Eunice 18th February

fits

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118651258#Comment_118651258

It’s gas the way the buoys and now Valentia go off line when you really want to see their readings. To be expected in those conditions I suppose.

Danno

Gone from flat calm to gusting over 40mph (60kmh) in a matter of minutes!!! (South Laois) Sleet and temperatures rocketing down.

It certainly seems the models were 1.5hrs ahead in their forecasts, but pretty much all predictions otherwise look good.

Gaoth Laidir

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118651258#Comment_118651258

Valentia is reporting on the aviation site. 32 gust 58 knots.

PsMETAR VALE 180800Z AUTO 31032G58KT 6000NDV -SHRA BKN019/// 04/02 0994 MSL=

Tazio

It does look like it did arrive a little later than expected

Wine Goddess

Any information on where it made landfall? Was the track more southerly than expected?

Gone from being calm and sunny in Firhouse Dublin 24 to rainy and wind picking up now.

Tazio

sorry for quick reply on tech thread.. but Cork still on the up at 0900h

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118651531#Comment_118651531

I don't think it (Eunice) made landfall per say, the main core of the low tracking just off the south coast. It split into a double core with the northern (much slacker centre) pushing from SW Cork up the Shannon valley and veering NW over Mayo before moving east towards Belfast, that is my reading of it to this untrained eye!

Danno

Danno

It seems the northern low is deepening as it tracks in over Scotland, still a notable tightness to the isobars off SW Wales and NW Cornwall which is what the UK authorities are warning about.

Link to the page in case the animation above is too fast! Meteociel - Atmospheric pressure observed in real time in the United Kingdom

YanSno

Winds picking up along the south gusts of 137kmph

Gaoth Laidir

For me, increasing use of the term "landfall" for extratropical systems is not correct. RTÉ's correspondent down in Dingle this morning made great use of it and it seems great as it makes things sound comparable to a hurricane landfall. However, the latter's landfall is significant in that nearest the centre is where the worst of the winds are, whereas with our systems the strongest winds are always well away from the centre. So please, stop using this for these storms as it means absolutely nothing apart from adding hype.

YanSno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118651793#Comment_118651793

I completely agree with you some people might take the worng interpretation. It's too Americanised

Chris_5339762

137kmh for Roches Point warrants the red anyway, technically.

I'm a few kilometers inland from there (Cobh) and "only" got an 88kmh gust. For me that didn't even touch yellow but I could be a bit shielded.

Rikand

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118651282#Comment_118651282

How much would it cost to get some of these southern stations a decent ups and diesel generator for when the power goes out

giveitholly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118646787#Comment_118646787

Looks about right for Galtymore

Sorry for the sideways pic

Gaoth Laidir

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118651893#Comment_118651893

They've all been reporting on external sites, such as Meteologix.com

Meteologix.com

piplip87

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118651910#Comment_118651910

The wind obviously knocked you over just as you took it 🤣🤣🤣

Tazio

Cork is saying goodbye to Eunice. Interesting gust recorded at the airport at the 10:00h interval.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118651910#Comment_118651910

Fair play to you. Was going to ask if anyone had eyes on Galty or Croagh Patrick.

Meteorite58

Nothing notable here outside Tralee, no damage apart from a few branches down and saw a few slates come off probably dodgy roofs, squally hail showers and windy for sure but way under what the models were showing, but must say GFS / WRF did well, very much a coastal event in the end it seems for Ireland in general. Must have a look later at the data after work.

Darwin

I noticed that yesterday's UKMO 12z run was the most bullish in terms of wind impact on the southern half of the country, but as @Meteorite58 points out the GFS and WRF modelled this particulary well. I find the superforecast on windfinder.com (derived from GFS) is usually pretty accurate for my location. Just for fun, I made a note yesterday evenings TAFs from Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports and compared the forecasts to today's actual peak gusts:

Dublin airport: 100Km/h @ 11am (forecast gust 50 knots = 92.6 Km/h, but gave 40% prob of 60 knots)

Shannon airport: 106Km/h @ 10am (forecast gusts 50 knots, 40% probability of 65 knots)

Cork airport: 122Km/h @ 10am (forecast 60 knots = 111 Km/h)

So all underestimated slightly ignoring the 40% prob., but always interesting to cross-check the TAFs against the various models.

mickger844posts

For my location the Wxsim software on my website did well showing a Max Gust of 91km/h when actually it was 85km/h. Allowing for height differences of my anemometer it was accurate. In general we could have had a lot worse conditions considering what Wales and England are getting currently.

The center of the low never really got that classic structure we see on most Atlantic storms. The fact the main low passed over the south coast and another low moved up to Scotland diluted what most got in the end. Still 137km/h at Roches Point and others above 100km/h including Waterford Airport so defintely memorable.

Gaoth Laidir

Hourly animation of gusts since 21Z yesterday. Ireland got off very lightly in comparison to southern GB and now the Netherlands. The snow in Ireland really didn't materialise away from Donegal. Certainly not the "drifting snow" that the Minister Patrick O'Donovan spoke of when referring to the orange snow warning counties on Drivetime yesterday.

SouthWesterly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118652626#Comment_118652626

Power lines down and trees down in ballymac.

Kielduff has some big trees down.

Lyracrumpane still without power.

Friend in ballymac had a neighbours trampoline cross 2 hedges, go up a lane and hit his car in the yard.

Council worker killed in wexford

Larbre34

Let's be honest, none of the data really supported widespread lying snow at low elevations and that's how it played out, despite interpretations to the contrary here and in other places. 150m seems to have been the snowline for a time and that's not bad going for an Atlantic storm delivery.

As for Minister O'Donovan, you could hardly expect him to be giving an accurate forecast briefing, just from those few keywords he picked up at the meetings he attended. Met Éireann were right to warn about the risk of snowfall causing disruption on the roads, albeit in short lived bursts, but perhaps a yellow rather than orange warning would have been correct in retrospect.

Tyrone212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118655207#Comment_118655207

You're almost at the level of that idiot from Donegal now with nonsense you come out with. Yesterday you said no LOI match would be cancelled, it was said to you finn harps could be cancelled as its the only game in an orange snow warning. You said there's no chance of snow there as its only 30m asl (it's actually less) and that it would a typical week in winter nothing more up there. Well it was cancelled earlier today because it failed a pitch inspection with lying snow.

You would have seen lots of pics of the thread today of lying snow in the NW and many of them low level as well. You said it would all be above 300m. You were badly wrong and our now trying to say you were right and everyone else was wrong. The warning was only for the far NW you know, not countrywide. A bit simple I reckon.

M.T. Cranium

Looking back at the model performances, when the ICON was showing a track well to the south, it wasn't as far off as the consensus method suggested, although at the 48 to 60 hour time range, the main model error was not so much with track but that dual structure which only began to emerge on more recent model runs. So that makes the discussion of the track performance somewhat blurred by the fact that the northern set of track predictions verified for the northern centre that emerged, but the southern set were fairly good for the southern energy centre.

The fact that the storm took on that dual structure probably explains a lot of the eventual differences between forecast and actual weather, it was clear that the northern energy centre robbed the snowfall zone of full potential except perhaps in one or two places in Mayo and Donegal. It also tended to dilute the strength of northwest winds that would eventually join forces with the southern energy centre, and that probably explains perceived errors (as widely discussed in the other thread) in the orange level wind alerts in Leinster.

I guess I won't use the term landfall again after reading some comments about it, but it was a rather innocuous attempt to avoid a longer string of words relating to track analysis, for me "landfall" just means where the low centre reaches land and does not carry along any implications of "there shall many die" or "here will everyone pledge allegiance to the stars and stripes." Neither of those implications was my intent in using the term, it simply meant what I outlined above, the model depiction of where the low would reach land. In fact, while strongest winds often are found 50-150 miles south of a landfall point (and even for hurricanes, 20 to 50 miles is standard), in this case as with Darwin there was a tendency for strong winds to follow behind the track of the low centre, so I wouldn't say there is always the same relation between storm track and strong winds. Even so, no doubt the strongest winds of the storm were held off to the south and eventually went on to do considerable damage across southern England which was not a surprise to anyone I would think.

Anyway, +1 to Kermit for thinking this would be an event worthy of a thread, and +1 to Sleet and Snow for realizing that a technical thread would be a good idea. The larger general interest thread had a lot of good posts that I found useful, but also it tends to be a collection of comments that I could predict better than the weather itself, and usually from the same people at roughly the same times relative to the unfolding storm. While it's amusing at one level, it is also a pointless waste of time to read the back and forth about their opinions.

sryanbruen

Rather than update the overall storm comparison table to include Storm Eunice (unless there's interest for that), I thought it would be better to do an event specific table of the wind gusts and mean wind speed data at Irish stations.

As always, each one is colour coded to what the value warrants on the warning system.

Roches Point had its highest mean wind speed for February since 1957 and Fastnet had its highest wind gust since Ophelia with 172 km/h. Remember that Fastnet is very exposed but this figure is still notable for there.

On a local note, Dublin Airport had its highest mean wind speed since Doris in February 2017 and had stronger winds than Casement - something that has tended to be the opposite in recent years.

tiegan

"Anyway, +1 to Kermit for thinking this would be an event worthy of a thread, and +1 to Sleet and Snow for realizing that a technical thread would be a good idea. The larger general interest thread had a lot of good posts that I found useful, but also it tends to be a collection of comments that I could predict better than the weather itself, and usually from the same people at roughly the same times relative to the unfolding storm. While it's amusing at one level, it is also a pointless waste of time to read the back and forth about their opinions."

^^^^ spot on, 100% M.T - thanks for all your time, experience and expertise you bring to these threads for ALL our benefit.

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657178#Comment_118657178

@sryanbruen the top 10-minute speed in Durrow was ~30mph/48kmh.

Very interesting stats and a big thank you for compiling. Mace hd stands out as a county in Orange warning but recorded red warning speeds.

Its gives merit to the warning level criteria requiring a review - but that is for another thread.

Also, is Johnstown the Wexford station Johnstown Castle?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118650248#Comment_118650248

Deleted

Akrasia

England broke the record for highest ever gusts of 122mph at the Isle of Wight

Good thing 'the data shows storms are getting weaker'

Gaoth Laidir

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657789#Comment_118657789

I see cherries are ripe for picking right now.

One 30-metre-high exposed lighthouse out on a rock in the sea that always reads higher than anywhere on the mainland exceeds the previous record from 1979 and you use it in an AGW quest, ignoring previous data that showed storm windspeeds trending in the opposite direction. Not going to hijack this thread with that, but will just leave this.

The record squall, the fastest wind speed ever recorded in England, was reported at the Needles Lighthouse on England's Isle of Wight, beating the previous record of 118 mph (190 km/h) at Gwennap Head, Cornwall, in 1979, according to the Met Office. The fastest wind speed ever recorded in the U.K. was on Cairngorm Summit, a mountain in Scotland that experienced a gust of 173 mph (278 km/h) in 1986.

Despite the storm's devastation, scientists have warned against rushing to link its severity to climate change. Peter Thorne, a professor of climate science at the University of Maynooth in Ireland, wrote on Twitter that, while climate change is making coastal storm surges and extreme rainfalls during storms like Eunice more likely, there is limited evidence for winds themselves being worsened. In addition, climate scientists have long explained that currently, they cannot link an event on its own to the changing climate.

"There are enough already serious and self-evident impacts of climate change happening without proverbially over-egging the pudding and linking each and every event to climate change," Thorne added.

Gaoth Laidir

Animation of hourly pressure readings since Monday, showing Dudley's very fast movement eastwards late Wednesday, followed by Eunice's relatively slower movement yesterday.

Gaoth Laidir

That ship sailing northeastwards to the south of Ireland over the past couple of days is a container ship called Atlantic Star, and is en route from Halifax to Liverpool. They were releasing a couple of weather balloons every day over the past week, so the name is pretty apt. Without their vital upper data the models would no-doubt have done a worse job.

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657789#Comment_118657789

As an anecdotal observation it seems to me that the wind-field of storms are getting smaller in general and sometimes when conditions are right, very localised effects are capable of matching the storms of old?

For instance, compare Eunice along with say Ophelia and even Darwin - these gave severe conditions in selected localised areas whereas comparing these to The Christmas Storms of 97/98 along with Debbie 62, those blew the whole freakin' Island.

compsys

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657789#Comment_118657789

There's a difference between climate and weather.

It's like saying there's no such thing as global warming if we mange to get a bad cold snap.

The data actually does show wind speeds are getting slightly weaker. Dublin had its least windy year since 1959 according to ME.

That doesn't mean big storms and gales can't still be expected. But it's the overall trend over a decade or more that counts.

M.T. Cranium

Also I would hazard the guess from the damage in Oct 1987 that some places without weather stations might have exceeded the wind speed in Eunice at Needles IOW. Whole groves of trees were blown down in the New Forest -- and before somebody says they were in full leaf, I think many of them were coniferous. Also the celebrated Nov (OS) Dec (NS) 1703 storm probably had higher wind gusts than either of them, it certainly had a much higher storm surge into the Severn estuary.

I don't see much evidence of climate change as a big factor in Eunice. The sea surface temperatures in the cyclogenesis zone were not particularly unusual (18 C at 40 N mid-Atlantic is not astonishing). There wasn't some remarkable upper air pattern either, the one thing notable was the presence of those stronger winds for a time, but as we seldom see actual measurements out in the middle of the ocean, we might just not have the climatology record needed for a true comparison.

Chris_5339762

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657178#Comment_118657178

Thats fascinating that Roches Point was so high. I'm on Cobh only a few kilometers away line-of-sight and although ther ewas a fair rake of shielding from the land going on, speeds were quite low for me overall. Max gust of 88kmh, and mean winds of 40 - 50kmh only.