So this Hurricane

GFish wrote: »

True, and there were lots of people out for very good reasons.

Don't assume that people who were out and who might or might not have lost their lives were either selfish or stupid.

People who were out walking in areas with fallen trees , or out swimming , surfing etc are both selfish and stupid which is not what I said about the victims.

You are just perceiving/twisting it that way.

Here lads could murpho come back and explain again that he wasn't judging, just stating facts, and then could gfish point out again how offensive it still is? If ye could do that another ten or twelve times I'm sure you'll change one another's mind. Sound.

Thanks Paddy.
I think you've said enough.

I get it - except for the Poker bit - that's your area.
I don't know much about gambling with peoples lives

Permabear wrote:

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I was out in the storm yesterday, during or near it's worst, this was planned. I have an interest in weather, in particular extreme weather. I had provisions with me encase I got stranded including sleeping bag etc. I've been in extremely dangerous situations in the past, possibly including yesterday, this will not stop me from doing it again. I did however see extremely dangerous risk taking yesterday, the most concerning being, a father and two young kids being outside, watching the big waves at or near storm height, I was inside my car at this stage. Having your kids outdoors during storm height is one thing, but actually having them outside is whole level of stupidity! I was astonished. I can understand people's fascination with these kind of natural phenomenon, but please, don't risk your kids lives!

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Just to add to the mix, I happened to be driving in the middle of the Storm coming home from work in what would have been close to peak intensity for the North of the Island. I know NI was under a slightly different warning, ie. yellow rather than red, however almost everywhere was sending home employees early to get back home before the worst hit. The company I work for was the exception which sent an e-mail around stating it would be "business as usual" but that they would be monitoring the situation. I also heard a manager stated in a meeting something similar and something along the lines of how important it was for people to be working rather than being let out early. This meant that practically everyone who left my place of work yesterday had to drive during the beginning of peak intensity and a number came across trees that were down and blocking the road.

A lot of people might have been out in the middle of it all because they didn't have a choice or had to weigh up in their head getting in trouble with work for leaving early or staying and taking a chance on getting home later. There were times it didn't seem bad and staying in work would have been an easy option to make. Then other times a large gust would hit the car and remind you that you were in the middle of a particularly nasty storm. It's still quite gusty where I am at the minute with some large and loud gusts periodically which aren't too far off what it was like when it was at it's worst.

I'm very thankful for social media yesterday it really was a life saving platform. While I was sitting in my tall terraced well sheltered city centre house in cork I was doubting the severity of it but I could see the carnage unfolding on Twitter, Facebook etc and heeded the advise to stay in. I'm sure lots felt the same.

On another note there is a precedent for this now "hurricane winds" in ireland. Public structures will need to be fit for purpose, too many easily ripped apart yesterday.

jon1981 wrote: »

I think met eireann were afraid of getting it wrong and just put the whole country under red alert. Costly move, is it lazy weather forecasting or was it just that unpredictable?

I think the wind in north Dublin is far worse now.

Also, while i criticize the forecasting, had the scaremongering not taken place i feel many more would have been killed or seriously injured. Some large trees came down in parts of Dublin that would be along very busy pedestrian paths.

A few points on the forecasting;

- This was an exceptionally rare event. The models are decent, but having past data to extrapolate from is invaluable and there just wasn't much of it this side of the Atlantic.

- The storm did a few unusual things. Firstly, it was supposed to start transitioning from a Cat2 as it lurked up the Atlantic seaboard. Instead, a couple of days beforehand, it stalled in a patch of low-shear winds. This held off the transition process (to extra-tropical storm or ex-hurricane*) It also lead to an unexpected strengthening to a Cat3.

I am not sure how much difference that delay did, but there was some question as to whether that stalling and intensifying made it harder for the jet stream to whisk it up to where models were predicting landfall and/or caused unpredictable movement from then. We do know that the models were having trouble aligning, and she shifted a bit east (when she was due to hit Waterford dead-on), and then west again at the last moment, taking the path she eventually did.

This meant that predicting the worst of the storm impact was very difficult. A shift of a couple of milimeters on the models could result in a whole county getting hammered that was predicted to see nothing worse than a gale. That is a hell of a lot of responsibility to take on for the sake of inconvenience to people. When the Red warning was put in place across the country, there was still question as to whether it would wallop Waterford. Crucially, it seemed to be skipping Cork (Cork was showing between the eye and the eastern windwall, with Waterford in the windwall). I think they did have a Red for Cork anyway, but taking two counties further in, it could have made the difference between no-one being on the streets and a normal day that suddenly got a hurricane.

I'm very forgiving of the forecasters in this. They did an incredible (and pretty accurate) job in very difficult, time-limited circumstances with lives depending on them.




*This was causing a lot of confusion yesterday, I think. A hurricane can be downgraded to a tropical storm within the tropics (Cat 2 - Cat 1 - TS). This refers to a drop in its sustained wind speed. A hurricane will transition to an extra-tropical storm if it lurks northwards enough to get caught by mid-lat upper air conditions/jet stream, etc. This changes the shape of the storm in this case but is not predicated on intensity or speed.

So, you can have an extra-tropical storm that hits with the force of a Cat1 hurricane, but a tropical storm hits at tropical storm intensity. (Corrections welcome if I've mucked up a point).

Note the phrasing of "the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia" is both technically accurate and misleading. From the technical modelling point of view, yes, it was the remnants of a hurricane, insofar as she had transitioned to an ex-hurricane. BUT, what we usually get when we have the term "remnants of hurricane X" is the more usual hurricane from the Americas rolling across the cooler Atlantic, losing power along the way and arriving to us as a low pressure zone with a lot of rain and some wind. What hit us still had the force and intensity of a hurricane, especially in the south. It's a slightly clumsy way to phrase it, and it is misleading, technically accurate or not.

I got pretty lucky too, the far west coast slithered by more or less untouched (bar Kerry) it seemed. I was expecting it to be much rougher, but overall, I am not complaining that there's not, for instance, a roof tile embedded in the car or a tree in the living room.

Today is a day for anyone who can fog a mirror to go;
cleaning hard to get windows
fixing roofs
using chainsaws.

Got absolutely blown out of it yesterday. I left work at around midday as I'm on a motorbike and the wind was really starting to pick up. Got blown around a bit on the drive home but not as bad (for me) as Darwin in 2014.
Got home and the electricity went out at around half 12 and still not back.
The wind was wild in Waterford from around 2pm until around 6pm. Then it eased a bit but still had the occasional big gust in the middle of a constant very strong wind until around 9pm.
Quite wet but the wind was the big problem.

Lots of trees down and general debris all over the place.

What an awful day for the families and friends of the deceased. A really shocking and sudden way to lose a family member.