Storm Debi : Mon 13th Nov 2023

Max wind gusts and sustained winds at Irish synoptic stations for Storm Debi. No red warranted winds at any of the official stations.

Mullingar had its highest wind gust since December 2013. Athenry had its highest wind gust in its relatively short record (since 2010).

I think we can argue all we want about the wind speed and whether a red was justified but given there was a high tide coinciding with the storms arrival in the west coast and trees still in leaf (just about), and flooding already being a problem in parts of the country I certainly think a high level warning was justified. We also line in a 24 hour economy now too so places don’t shut at midnight at the latest. I can only consent for my location and the sustained intensity regardless of the gusts she’d was notable.

I also think the prudent thing was to shut schools til midday. That gives repair crews tune to address any issues or road clearance crews tune to do their work. On the plus side if an area was clear enough there was nothing stopping schools opening at 10. It’s up to parents to use their judgement.

Let’s face it, 95% of the time these warnings will be overblown and maybe not fully warranted but there will be that one time when they do the job and lives are saved.

I wouldn't really be critical of ME for issuing the red warnings - at least one of the models predicted red level windspeeds for the counties that ME issued the red warnings for. It was pointed out on this forum that that particular model usually overstates wind speeds and this turned out to be the case but ME will still have had to err on the side of caution

However, this morning, Claire Byrne asked a ME representative if the windspeeds had met red criteria. He said that the sustained wind speeds did - that's not backed up by sryanbruen's table above. He also said that while ME's stations didn't record red level gusts, other weather stations did. That sounds like a cop out - ME relying on unofficial measurements by amateurs (no offence to any enthusiast on here who has their own station) to try to justify a red level warning, issued by ME.

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The mistake was putting Dublin and the East into Red. It was proper Red conditions in Galway, I would hate to think that they wouldn’t issue a warning like that in the future because a few of the ‘it didn’t happen in my backyard so it’s not warranted’ brigade who are out being overly critical. One of the weather stations being referred to is the Marine Institute in Oranmore. This is a proper weather station IMO and showed very high sustained winds and peak gusts of 148km/h.

Yeah, was that the town on the rte news?

Lot of damage there it seems. Terrible for those businesses.

Is that Ranelagh in south dublin, where the edgelords are telling us there was no wind? Must have been coincidental

I was never expecting red alert wind speeds to verify at some inland locations like mountdillon and mullingar which don't seem all that well exposed based on peak winds in past storms, Johnstown Castle is another location I never expect to reach "representative" wind speeds. Also I just read on here that the peak gust at Athenry (116) was a station record. So these higher gusts at presumably better exposed locations seem plausible, the 92 mph is worth a check for instrument reliability perhaps but gusts into the 70-80 mph range would be quite plausible if mountdillon reached 65 (106 km/hr).

If the debate about appropriate colour coding is going to be based on the official sites and their max gusts, then we're going to need a system where a red alert is based on mullingar reaching 100 or mountdillon 110, as they seem unlikely to reach 130 in any normal situation.

Anyway, I think post-mortem a red alert was justified for at least Galway, Roscommon, and parts of other counties further east, probably orange was barely justified for Dublin and Kildare. I am responding to this post without having read last two pages so I don't know if sryanbruen published his table yet, if so, or when he does, I would check how gusts at mullingar compare to other storms, as I don't believe mullingar's peak gusts mean a lot outside of a comparative framework, they are rarely going to be even yellow let alone orange level.

(edit, now I did read last two pages and saw a table for today, would be interesting to see a full record for mullingar's peak gusts in all storms as I suspect it would illustrate point being made.)

As to a sting jet being responsible for localized peak gusts, quite possible, and you could draw up a ten to twenty mile wide corridor from Galway towards Ballyhaise that never includes an official measuring site, possibly Athenry on the southern flank of that zone, and anecdotal reports in the thread seem to support that model of storm impacts.

Paddy McHugh, now there is a blast from the past! I don't remember the 1988 storm either. The one that sticks out to me from that time was a storm in 1990. In contrast to last night's storm, it lasted for over 10 hours.

Is this true?

I can't tolerate much more storms like storm Debi. A milder storm or a windy day is grand but last night was a pack of crap.

Aw God I hope not , I want snow storms

I think met eireann made the right call last night due this unpredictable storm development. A little bit lower in pressure would have this storm far more severe than it was. Here in North meath I was surprised by the amount of trees it felled on my land including two fully grown Ash, one which was completely uprooted. There was a lot of power outages in my area some still without it tonight. My little one's school could not open at 10am either due to no power for heat or water. I think the colour coded warnings don't work very well and can lead to a lot of confusion and division. I think by simply naming a storm when severe weather is imminent and advising of its possible dangers on time , including ground saturation, tree hazards particularly now with Ash trees and the timing of an event coinciding with school and work times and high tides etc. Maybe less of these crywolf yellow warnings.

Well done Meteorite on seeing this innocuous development days beforehand and your brilliant coverage of the storms development as usual. I also love looking at syrans table and that Feb 1988 storm was always the king of storms for me.

Worse storm i can remember boxing day 1998 over 100mph in Northern Ireland winds lasted over 12hrs snowed shortly after system passed lines buried under snow i was escalated by NIE 250,000 people out in Northern Ireland at the peak of storm we were still connecting isolated locations to the grid 10 days later crazy storm.