Storm Franklin - Sunday 20th/Monday 21st Feb 2022

1 of English tabloids newspapers said 4 named storms could be on the way for the UK...so presumably we'd get them as well...the Atlantic can be volatile this time of year.

28m wave recorded on M4 bouy. Scary stuff.

http://webapps.marine.ie/IWPGraphs/Default.aspx?Type=3&ProjectId=2&Inst=Hmax&InstSite=M4

Here's the ever anticipated and entirely predictable compared to the weather (😝) storm comparison table for max. wind gusts updated to Franklin and I included Eunice too. On this occasion, I have added Athenry, Dunsany, Moore Park and Mount Dillon into the mix also - don't ask why I didn't have those included before because I don't have an answer why!

For Mace Head's wind gust of 139 km/h, I am going by met.ie which doesn't suggest anything higher than that throughout the night. I will update if I have to.

As always for newcomers, values are colour coded to represent their warranted warning level based on criteria set out by Met Éireann: 90-109 km/h = yellow, 110-129 km/h = orange, 130+ km/h = red. Anything less than 90 km/h = green/no warning.

On a national average using the stations in this table, Storm Franklin fell just short of Storm Barra in December (101 km/h vs 102 km/h national averages respectively) but was significantly more widespread than Eunice which had a national average of 94 km/h. Malin Head had its highest wind gust since January 2012 whilst Mace Head had its highest since September 2018 and the highest in Ireland since August 2020.

The top 5 strongest storms on a widespread national scale in this table are Darwin (121 km/h) in February 2014, Ophelia (106 km/h) in October 2017, Erich (106 km/h) in December 2013, Doris (105 km/h) in February 2017 and Ulli (105 km/h) in January 2012 whilst the weakest by far was Lorenzo (76 km/h) in October 2019.

I have slacked a bit on the progress of the sustained winds comparison table so it is still not ready - my focus has been on other projects. For now, I have given the sustained winds for Franklin vs Eunice below too. Feel free to provide your Durrow max. sustained speed Danno if you're reading this.

EDIT: For some reason, the storm comparison table on Boards is very poor quality and can hardly make out the values. So here's my tweet of it instead if you wish to view it.

The key here is the word "widespread". Most areas were well below Red criteria, but this then again brings into question the policy of issuing colour by county.

I think I have finally found the location of the "Athenry" station, its 3 kilometers from the town. Would the presence of the raised M6 and M18 motorways have much effect on the readings I wonder? Although the M18 is a good distance away by looking at this.

Great work again here.

Just one observation from a parochial view, but I wonder how well the two South Western most stations capture these storms?

Sherkin has some high gusts but you'd expect it to be showing higher gusts more often than not than, say, Roches Point in East Cork. That said, I know Sherkin well as I get to spend time there. It is a fairly well sheltered Island in a bay with Cape Clear Island one side of it and Baltimore the other. I suspect if the station was on one of the headlands in West Cork then gusts would be higher.

Valentia I don't know well and looking at the map it looks reasonably exposed, so it's very surprising its highest gust in 10 years is 137kph and even then during a storm where each of Sherkin, Shannon and Mace got to the 155+ kph. Is there a local explanation? You'd imagine a station on the west Kerry coast would get much higher readings.

I appreciate the same may be true of stations further north I don't know about.

Took a drive out to slea head today for a few photos

Was windy but nothing to bad.

Incredible waves at Clogher strand.

Beach was covered in foam.

As mentioned there are no damaging wind gust scenarios evident in the guidance at present, but we need to keep an eye on Thursday afternoon and evening when I would expect "yellow alert" wind gust potential in similar areas to yesterday's worst-hit counties, and from a rather similar looking set-up within a west to northwest flow. The current maps look less threatening than Franklin at this time.

Saturday has some borderline yellow alert wind potential from south to southwest winds more for the south coast in this case.

Personally, I think there probably should have been a red alert for at least Donegal, Sligo and Mayo, but take it as a sort of compliment that the Met service probably looked at it during the day and said, "well those people are used to very strong winds, we can leave this at orange." If they ever do issue a red alert up there it should be taken very seriously if Franklin didn't merit one, then something that does would presumably be stronger than Franklin. Another factor was the duration of strong gusts, many of our reports here suggested an incessant nature to the storm and over six to nine hours; that was another feature that in my mind at least would suggest a valid red alert status.

I see that a gust of 145mph was recorded off malin Head during Franklin, see below

Average imperial joe....

Thanks Mt, I was like that can't be right

Thanks for adding Gurteen.....but...am....it's almost at the diagonally opposite end of the county to where you have it marked.. 😊

Good work, great tool. Just to say though that Moore Park is in the wrong place too. You have it near Waterford city in east Waterford. Its actually about 90km away in north Cork just outside Fermoy (about 40km north of Cork city). See below

Cheers, I'll update that one too. I added some of those new ones with a quick Google search for coordinates which is why some are off

Very useful, thanks!