Ophelia Contest: Predict the Highest Gust at a Met Eireann Station

Roches 91kt

Sherkin 94kt

Johnstown Castle 80kt

Dub Air 68kt

Casement 76kt

Roche's point 94knts

Roches Point 96kt

Cork Airport 94kt


and for the hell of it

Kinsale 105kt

Dublin Airport 71kt

Sherkin 101kt

I think I've seen 91, 90, 94, 95 kt predictions for Sherkin Island so I'll go with 93 kt for there.

92 miles per hour at Roches point.

My contest entry stands but if there was a station at Kilkee it might top 100 after the eye passes. Mace Head also might surprise around 3-4 pm.

Not sure if we'll get a full report from Sherkin for the day eventually, they might just be having a power outage (d'ya think dinozzo?)

Not sure why that's unheard of, its only storm force 11 and not even a station record?

The met's wording throughout this was a little odd, 'worst storm in over 50 years', 'unprecedented' etc. It was always forecast on the models to be a strong and dangerous storm but never close to record breaking.

The data from Sherkin will be interesting, it went offline just as it was really ramping up.....

84kt was highest at Roches so far, what was interesting was the high gust ratio generally across the country...

Perhaps overall the intensity was approx 10% less than I was expecting but the widespread nature of the event means for me it surpasses the Darwin storm ---will be interesting to see if Sherkin surpassed the high gust from Darwin of 86kt at Shannon Airport...

Those of you who chose Johnstown Castle -- I think they maxed out at 62 knots but that is a very high reading for the location as it's inland several miles and surrounded by trees (I had a look on google earth once because I had noticed it always seemed to run lower than Waterford A so I wanted to see if I could get an equivalent comparison, I usually figure they run 20% below what a fully exposed site in south Wexford might report). So your guesses were not that bad given the lower exposure, I imagine it means that gusts to nearly 80 knots occurred in some places nearby. The M5 buoy also peaked near 60 knots which is quite high for that location.

I realize Fastnet is out to sea but which direction is it relative to Sherkin? I don't recall seeing reports from there during Darwin. Heard about the 1979 sailing race disaster otherwise wouldn't even have known of its existence before today.