Mike Poole

UKMO T168 best chart for coldies in 7 day timeframe we’ve seen for weeks, not that that is saying much

Well the seasonal models for March don’t really hang back on their view, here’s the lot from Copernicus, Z500 anomaly: Some even have an orange hole anomaly (that seems to be the colour off the chart values cause here!). So one would think that as the sun gets stronger into March we could see some settled and fairly warm spring-like conditions, especially in the south. Further forward, weak signals, but higher rather than lower height anomalies, in the region of the UK. Positioning variable.

Would be very localised. You can see an 80 km/h hardly any distance away on the chart.

Recently recorded wind gusts km/h:

Wind almost as noisy as Friday here, as the squall lines went through. Second one only very short spell, first was slightly longer. It is still gusting strongly now. Took my eye off the ball after Friday to be honest! Very active spell of weather at the moment!

Only a quick look at the models today after a couple of days of looking at every run! ECM and GFS T168: Don’t want to look further than this, but a consistent signal for more settled weather in a weeks time. Bank that and then look for interest the following week. By the way, that will be into March, and out of winter, so finally some snowflakes might be possible. None since November here, it seems the one season you can’t get snow in down south these days is: winter. Well you’d have to count summer as well, I guess, unless it was 1975!

Maybe after today, nobody is going to notice if your forecasts for Sunday or Monday are right or wrong, so get some zzz’s mate!

Not sure I relate to those, @Mapantz but I get what you are saying and I think it is in part to do with the emotional investment in the run up to the storm (or other event, I think it would be similar if it was a potential blizzard). I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been following all the model runs (well all the ones that come out in the day time, anyway) for best part of a week now looking at this event, it has happened, it was a memorable one, what next? Maybe a break from model watching for me!

What is it with trampolines? I don’t know anyone who has got one. Are they really that prevalent? Are they a first world problem? Well obviously, yes! But seriously, I understand the physics, they may travel if the wind gets under them, but from reports it seems they come from nowhere on days like these - and suddenly become part of our lives. Weird!

So to the post-mortem then! All events that have some serious build up to them deserve some post-match analysis! My takes, and bear in mind that apart from an early morning run prior to things revving up, I haven’t left my flat all day, are: The destruction in the south definitely warranted an extensive red warning. Highest ever gust 122mph on Isle of Wight cements the storm in English history. The red warning for the southeast must have involved a lot of head scratching, but I think it could have been made before the close of working/school day Thursday without any loss of anguish for those making the decisions - that’s going by the model output we can see, I don’t think there was any significant model output after Thursday’s 12z runs that would have swung it one way or the other. The matrix warning system doesn’t work - if it did the big amber warning area yesterday would have been split into the 4 different types of amber warning on the matrix and it wasn’t, it was all the maximum impact, 2nd level likelihood which proved unfounded in many areas. The sting jet didn’t happen, but we take from AROME a) that it was on the cards at one point, and b) that it can be modelled and forecast. The models did exceptionally well at forecasting this storm from 4 days out. The degree of consistency was exceptional - even ICON which was consistently wrong! But the rest of them were very good. Until the next one, best regards Mike

M4 in Wales - ooops!

Really howling wind gusts now in south Oxfordshire. Quite scary as the worst is yet to come, I’m sure. I don’t know if anyone posted the UKMO 6z, not much change but the eastern end of the south coast is looking very exposed:

These charts show the maximum gusts that have occurred up to a certain time, so in the case below, up to 24hrs until midnight (1.00 French time as it is a French chart). Obviously those gusts will be much earlier in the day.

Meteociel - Observations des rafales de vent en Royaume-Uni en temps réel WWW.METEOCIEL.FR Données des rafales de vent en France et dans les pays limitrophes.

Latest recorded wind gusts in km/h:

Indeed. Looks slightly further north on this run, but AROME has had this for 4 of the last 5 runs (12z the exception). Finally, when only us weather geeks are awake to pay heed to it! And it is a huge area for a red warning, by far the biggest ever.

This is the area that I think really needs watching, as this is where the effects of the sting jet would be felt:

It is so close now, that I’d certainly start to take less notice of the GFS and more notice of the higher resolution models. ICON-EU is not my favourite but it is higher resolution locally to Europe. ARPEGE and AROME will be very interesting, AROME just trickling out now.

Latest fax, 18z:

ICON-EU 18z take on it, looks a little further north and stronger to me than the 12z suite:

Yes, this has been my worry about the warnings, exactly. I know we have discussions about the right or wrongs of warnings for every severe event on here, and I’ve tended not to get involved much, but on this occasion I feel the Met Office have erred on the dangerous side given the very different levels of risk at different places under the same blanket amber warning area.

I think my main concern is with the amber area being so large, there is nothing to differentiate ‘shades of amber’ which, in terms of risks, there clearly are big differences within that area. I’m thinking less of service providers (who probably get additional advice anyway) but of Joe public making decisions about how cautious to be tomorrow - that amber warning is doing a lot of heavy lifting, in my view

Well, I don’t know about @nick sussex view, who you direct the questions to, but since you ask, this is where I would have the red area, based on the 12z suite, noting that the Met Office have access to models we do not. The chart is max wind gusts from UKMO model. I’m not going to take up the maximum gust part of the challenge, because it isn’t just about this, it is about the density of population, time of day, and other things as well.

Well, we have passed the tipping point for further red warnings today. They would have had to have been issued before businesses and schools closed for the day, for those businesses and schools to be able make decisions about tomorrow and inform the necessary people about those decisions. We’ve seen particularly with schools that the decision has been taken to close in the regions in and close to the red zone. I worry that with that specific red zone now identified (correctly), people in the huge amber region may take their eyes off the ball - there are amber warnings and amber warnings, this one is at the most severe end (just compare with those put out sometimes for 10cm of snow, for example) but that doesn’t seem to be being communicated. I think a large part of the amber region may have had insufficient timely warning - that may because of model uncertainty, and uncertainty over a sting jet, but if some parts wake up tomorrow to a red warning, then there will be no time to ‘take action’. We will see…

HARMONIE 0z looks to be picking up the possible sting jet too, here T36 and T37, causing an acceleration of the winds moving into E Anglia (highlighted):