Storm Erik : Friday 8th February 2019

Thewife wrote: »

The Pres/Mocks are on at present if I am not mistaken

Depends on the school. I have mine this week and next week but like, come on now, it's the weekend. Besides mocks aren't worth it if I'm honest.

Off topic discussion over :P.

I fell fast asleep around midnight as I did a long day of frequent updates on Twitter so I missed out on the peak of Erik in Dublin.

How would you compare Erik to Ali? Storm Ali is still my favourite storm of the season I think and probably since the storm naming began in 2015 although Storm Doris in February 2017 was also a lot of fun.

Storm Erik has been added to my table of storm comparison now. I have also added Eleanor, Rachel and Erich (a placeholder name for that storm on Wikipedia so I thought I'd use it) - some of the worst storms this decade.

Each cell is coloured by their warranted warning.

These are all maximum wind gusts (kph), highest 10-minute mean wind speeds will be added to its respective table next month when the data is available.

Artane2002 wrote: »

Ali was probably stronger. I think people have kind of gotten used to a lack of wind because we've hardly had any this winter. Doris, Ophelia, Emma, Frank and Georgina felt louder but I don't know if they were all stronger. Also, Storm Rachel from a few years ago felt louder. That was the storm that had a red warning in the West I think.

Correct about Storm Rachel - I remember being jealous of students in the west getting off of school as a result.

Georgina sounded louder but it was mainly down to the combination of wind and the passage of a squall line during the early hours of 24 January 2018. It woke me up around 3 and I was frustrated because of that especially considering it was a school night.

I said I prefer using stats over people's recollections but with Ali, I kind of reconsidered that as they do not show Ali as a particular amazing storm and needed to be there to see what it was like.

What I remember from Storm Frank was generally the heavy rains that occurred particularly down in Cork although still do remember some fair gusts.

pauldry wrote: »

Here too. was all white with hail for an hour there

I don't think Big Nasty was talking about snow.

Syran, a great list there (as usual) of the recent gust speeds from recently named storms.

Is it possible, if you have time, to get a list of the average high gust speed from your dataset for each of the stations you mention? I could input all the data manually from your graph into a spreadsheet to find this out for myself, but it would take an age.

Agree MT. The high winds were noticeable for nigh on24 hours which is not typical, plus the strongest winds seemed to occur overnight which was unexpected. It was an unusual event.

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

One thing that was a bit different was the long duration of strong winds, just about 24 hours at Mace Head with gusts of at least 50 knots.

This was not the strongest wind gust of the winter, however, 67 knots on 25th January was 2 knots higher than Friday's 65 knots. If this holds to end of February, I am pretty certain this is the lowest maximum gust speed since starting the winter forecast contest in 2011. (61 was the max in December).

Mace Head had a gust of 79 knots during Storm Ali. Wonder how often the strongest gust of the season has taken place in early Autumn?

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

The trend in high wind speeds has been falling for a while now, so this comes as no surprise. What would have been once considered ordinary, run of the mill winter wind events have now become the new 'storms', that puts both the media and the public into a pearl clutching fret.

And its becoming increasingly irritating the trend in the media to ascribe every bit of "bad weather" to "climate change":rolleyes:

Here's an interesting factoid too, of all those stations, the only one never to break through the yellow ceiling is Mullingar. The location which has the most higher than yellow (in ten attempts) is a tie (seven) between Mace Head and Sherkin Island, with Mace Head leading the reds with four. I'm not surprised by any of those factoids but there you have it.

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

Well 1961 would qualify unless you're taking astronomical seasons. In the UK the 1987 storm was fairly early in the autumn season. So there have been some big examples but not many in total.

Yeah I thought 1961 would be there with Debbie although not 100% sure as January or February (pretty sure it was February) 1962 had a pretty strong storm too.

A quick look at Malin Head's max. gusts for every July to June period back to 1955 shows that the strongest wind gust of the season at the station has been recorded in September 2 times {1961, 1969}, October 5 times {1959, 1970, 1976, 1991, 2000} and November 7 times {1963, 1965, 1974, 1986, 1996, 2005, 2009}.

It's also interesting to point out that the station has had 7 of its weakest maximum wind gusts in the past 19 years (since 1955) for the fixed period named. The strongest being Debbie of 16th September 1961 with 98 knots and the weakest being 63 knots in 1968-69, 2009-10 and 2016-17. Even the "stormiest Winter on record" 2013-14 did not have a particularly high maximum wind gust at Malin Head.

I inputted the data into this graph and using a 10-year running average, there is a clear downwards trend in terms of maximum wind gusts for Malin Head. I think I remember Donegal Storm also mentioning that storms seem to have taken a more southwards track in modern times - which would be in line with this data and in my storm table comparison, Malin Head did not receive one warranted red warning even though it's regarded as the windiest synoptic station in the country on average due to how far north it lies.



Data from Met Éireann.

I had a look back and that report is accurate, the Kent railway station roof was damaged in the storm on 18 Dec 2013.

If you go back to that month in the weather forum, there was no dedicated thread for the storm, but it took up a fair amount of the discussion in a more general thread on Atlantic storms in Dec 2013. (the later named Erich on 27th-28th had its own thread, without mention of the name Erich in the thread title at least, didn't read the thread). This un-named storm on the 18th prompted a code red for parts of Connacht. There is a mention of the roof damage on page 44 of the thread with a tweet copied from the Irish Rail website.

The daily data portion of the met.ie website do not go back far enough for me to check, maybe sryanbruen or someone else can have a look and see what sort of peak gusts this event on the 18th Dec produced. If memory serves, there were also big storms in January 2014 that are not in the list of wind gusts yet, wasn't there one around the first week that did damage to coastal areas in west Munster? And here's a question, how did Erich come before Darwin in the same winter?

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

I have a list of the daily data from Met Eireann for that day here in a messy spreadsheet form but some select data: (highest gust speeds)

Belmullet 70kt
Ballyhaise 50kt
Casement 55kt
Cork Apt 60kt

Just looking through the data as I create tables before I go off to sleep and it says Malin Head recorded a max gust of 73 knots on 18th December 2013.

By the way, I got your request.

Was going to make one on the highest 10-minute mean wind speeds too but it's a bit late.

I included what I think are the most notable depressions of December 2013 and January 2014 though there were a few more like 30th/31st December and 24th/25th January. There would be a few more too to add from February 2014 such as the 1st, 5th, 8th and Valentine's Day.



Keep in mind, any data is open to error here.

Data comes from Met Éireann.

sryanbruen wrote: »

I think that would be very good but how would we formulate this index. For storms to be compared against each other, I think other data like mean wind speeds should be considered than just maximum gusts.

Also, how do we decide on deep depressions that weren't named? Some examples of lows to be considered in such a category in my opinion:

*3 January 2012
*8 December 2011
*11 November 2010
*17 January 2009
*10 March 2008
*27 October 2004
*27 October 2002
*26 December 1998
*24 December 1997
*5 January 1991
*25 January 1990
*26 February 1989
*25 July 1988
*9 February 1988
*14 August 1979
*2 January 1976
*28 January 1974
*16 January 1974
*12 January 1974

Fair points Syran, though I would suggest, just for the sake of simplicity, that just monitering gust speeds would be sufficenit as highest 10 min speeds are not that readily available to us on a day by day basis (except a month or two later when M.E release updated data up to the previous month)

I used to keep a record of mean daily windspeeds for each of the stations but stopped doing this last year due to time and (minor) health issues. I tend to just focus now daily temp, rainfall and pressure values.

Highest 10-minute mean wind speeds for Storm Erik in comparison with other storms now that data is released.



Data from Met Éireann.