Bay Of Biscay

[jackpunch]

Hi - First post on Netweather as my meteorological knowledge is extremely limited. However, I must say that I don't think that this has anything at all to do with the infrastructure of the South West of France/Northern Spain. As has already been pointed out, storms of this sort of intensity tend to hit the relatively sparsely populated areas of the UK - had this hit the South and South East of England, it would have made the news for the next 3 weeks. I've holidayed down in the South West of France many times and I suspect that the Pyrenees Atlantiques, Landes, and Gironde get very similar storms to the South West of England. I know that the thunderstorms have played havoc with my golf schedule when I've been down there !

Keep up the good work everyone, this is the best weather site on the web by a mile

Edited January 24, 2009 by jackpunch

[Phil UK]

Welcome to the good ship Netweather, Jackpunch.

If you need any help with weather or weather terminology, there are many on here who will gladly help you out.

Phil.

[jackpunch]

Cheers mate, much appreciated. I'm hoping Nick S gets back online tomorrow so we'll get to hear how bad it was as well as getting his excellent input into the latest model output, which is starting to look interesting again.

[donna-m]

Evening all,,

My friend lives in Bergerac, France has just e mailed me some photos of the storm ,, trees down,, and nearby flooding and the water is still rising.i'll try and upload them

she has just got power back on after 13 hours without,

Also mentioned that was the worse storm shes been in, what says alot as she was over here in the 87 storm in the south east

Edited January 24, 2009 by donna-m

[cj114]

Saw the news earlier, they are calling it storm of the decade!!

Looks dreadful, and those poor people being killed.

And Yeti, your post was in very poor taste. Yes, storms like that do hit the northern part of the UK quite often, but it's sparsely populated there, and the same in parts of Western Ireland.

I couldn't get through to anyone today, but as my House is not "Flappy", I'm sure other than losing some tree's, all is well.

[Osbourne One-Nil]

I must say I'm amazed at the poor infrastructure totally unsuited to this storm!

Come on, 170kmh is hardly a huge beast - Britain recorded that last week and in Scotland it's overcome many, many times a year - with far less structural damage!

Yes it's a big storm but the problem seems more to lie in all those flappy houses they build down there!

What a silly sausage.

There...is that allowed?

[Cookie]

glad nick is ok.

some damage!

[Guest]

Checked with the Midi Libre newspaper - this covers the area of Beziers, Narbonne & Montpellier (the area which interests me) - they did not appear to be playing it up that much - http://www.midilibre.com/ Aude seems to have caught it the most on the Pyrenees Oriental side, which includes Carcassonne which is a place which appears to be perpetually windy in my experience.

At least the winds were westerly and not easterly; a few years ago there was a very strong east wind, which gave a very high tide on the none tidal Mediterranean, which caused the waters of the Aude to back up, coupled with very heavy rain, which led to a lot of flooding and loss of life.

At the same time this storm is likely to increase the effect of the "Tramontane" which is a west north west wind blowing between the Pyrenees and the Massif, something similar to the Mistral.

Earlier this month when we had the cold and snow spell, temperatures for Capestang did not rise above freezing for a day (which I understand is a rare event; although it does snow occasionally, it rarely settles), and on checking through the temperatures for the summer, autumn and winter of 2008/9, this area of the Midi appears to have been quite a bit colder than normal.

As far as Nick is concerned I would expect that it is problems with power and phone lines and no doubt he will get through when he can and will be eager to report his observations.

[Roger J Smith]

I was glad to hear (well not hear really) that the ship making those vitally important reports did not go down in the hurricane force winds being reported. I am pretty sure it must have been drifting given its slow change in location downwind. And I did hear that the death toll included one sailor swept overboard from a ship, possibly that one I suppose.

If the exact same storm came in towards southern Ireland and the southern UK on a similar track, it would have been a little less intense because about 20% of the wind speed in this one was probably due to the topographic squeeze of the gradient by the mountains to its south, which would not have been the case for Britain. So if you see one like this heading in, expect sustained 55 mph winds, not 70, and gusts to 80, not 100. As far as the basic meteorology goes, it was somewhat less intense than the storm last weekend in western Ireland and western Scotland which reached 940 mbs and had a tighter gradient as well as larger pressure falls.

The storm has now crossed the Alps and northern Italy and has moved into Croatia and Slovenia in somwhat weakened form.

[cj114]

Guessing, Nick is still without power!!

Didn't like the sound of his last post, it seemed to be getting worse again.

The storm itself, was very bad. I've seen them myself in Summer, and that is scarey enough. The winds howl through the Mountains, and everything just disappears, and then I have around 2 mins to shut the windows and shutters.

We quite often lose Electricity, but only for a few hours.

If he does not turn up tomorrow, we will have to put out a weather alert for him. lol

Seriously, hope all is well.

But for God's sake Nick, LOG IN.

[Nick F]

Yep, hope he returns soon, as he is missing the drama in MOD of a potential beasterly.

At least 20 dead from the storm early on Saturday - I presume many were warned early and took necessary precautions. Seem to be have been gust(s) to 114mph at the height of the storm in SW France, anyone confim where this was recorded? Guess it was some coastal location.

[Coast]

Yep, hope he returns soon, as he is missing the drama in MOD of a potential beasterly.

I suspect either the power or the phone lines are still down. A sad loss of life and a stark reminder of natures power: News roundup

Seem to be have been gust(s) to 114mph at the height of the storm in SW France, anyone confim where this was recorded?

More than 1.1 million homes in France and hundreds of thousands in Spain remained without power on Sunday. Electricity workers were brought in from Britain, Germany and Portugal to help hundreds sent from the rest of France to patch up power supplies. A dozen helicopters were sent out to estimate the damage to the French electricity network, which the state electric company said could be worse than a hurricane which battered a wider area of France in 1999.

In Perpignan, near the French-Spanish border, the winds were recorded at 184 kilometres (114 miles) an hour.

[Nick F]

Didn't expect the strongest gust to be in Perpignan - which is just inland from the Mediteranean coast. I guess the funneling effect between the Massif Central/Languedoc and Pyrennes helped excarcebate wind gusts through that valley - a bit like the famous Mistral which blows down the Rhone Valley. There may even be a name for the wind that blows from the west and NW out across Perpignan.

[Coast]

Closest histroical data I can get so far is for Leucate-La Franqui here which shows peak gust of 103 km/hr and highest wind speed of 72.4 km/hr on the 24th.

[Karen Ann]

Hope we hear from Nick soon. I've been reading this thread with interest as I was in that area last year for my August hols. We were approx 40 miles from Perpignan back towards the border in the foothills of the Pyrenees Orientals this is where I saw my first every funnel cloud!

[Cookie]

Didn't expect the strongest gust to be in Perpignan - which is just inland from the Mediteranean coast. I guess the funneling effect between the Massif Central/Languedoc and Pyrennes helped excarcebate wind gusts through that valley - a bit like the famous Mistral which blows down the Rhone Valley. There may even be a name for the wind that blows from the west and NW out across Perpignan.

are you meaning the levantades?

[Mondy]

Storm damage footage in Spain of radio amateurs antennas: http://www.ea1uro.com/noticias.html

Edited January 26, 2009 by Delta X-Ray