Storm Eunice - 18th February

[snowrye]

15 minutes ago, TomSE12 said:

Obviously not as powerful as October 1987 or the 1990 Burns Day Storm but certainly a noteworthy event for an Inner London Borough, as here in Lewisham is.

We've lost a section of our garden fence and the neighbours opposite, have lost their guttering.

We would normally expect the Atlantic to be calming down, at this stage of the Winter but none of it this Year, with such a strong Polar Vortex, powering up the Jet Stream. 

Regards,

Tom. 

There's trees down everywhere, roads closed, roofs blown off, tiles, overturned lorries, etc etc, it was like someone had turned on a wind machine. Some real big gusts, and a roar which was both alarming, and beautiful. Hope you're well Tom, maybe next winter, the snow cup can return

[CurtisOliver]

Wind gusts still appear to be occasionally higher than the stated 45mph, but I would say as a whole the storm has mostly passed now. Forecasts have seemed to reasonably reliable. All I've found is that the longevity of the conditions lasted longer than initially predicted. I averaged various models before the storm arrived and it appeared to fit quite well. Before the storm I was looking at 67mph+. Based on nearby observations peak gusts look to be around 71-72mph. With a quite a few hours of 60mph+ gusts.

[DaveL]

39 minutes ago, Bristle Si said:

Yes they were. In fact, the 'local private' ones were really underestimating wind speeds by quite a margin. Guess, some of them are cheap cr@p

Not necessarily, it';s more likely to be non standard exposure. Mine for example is a Davis VP2 anemometer set at 3 metres on a pole at the bottom of my garden - but being in the middle of a housing estate and not at 10 metres,  the only valid comparison to be made is with its own historical records.

Over the years, I have a good feel for the relationship between gust speeds here and the official stations especially Southampton Airport, you can usually add about 50%. So my max today of 47mph + 50% is 70mph, just a few mph above the official max gust at the airport (which is 10 miles further inland). I broke my previous (8 year) record on both gust and mean wind speeds, today was a cracker.

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by DaveL

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Mike Poole said:

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

Agree with everything you say there Mike. Time for a sit down with a take-away and take stock.
 

From a personal perspective today was probably the strongest storm I’ve been since the burns day storm. Felt much more dangerous than Feb 2014, certainly way noisier. 

[Gowon]

3 minutes ago, Harry said:

I was 11 months old during the 1987 storm - my parents said they'd never been so frightened in all their life. Sufficed to say I have no recollection.

From my area, I think the red warning was totally justified. It is easily the strongest storm since the St Jude's Day storm, which I remember listening to in bed and the roar was phenomenal. I don't have data to compare Eunice with St Jude, but they certainly seemed comparable. Storms always seem different at night compared to the day, so I guess it'll be down to stats.

Certainly sounds like the worst of the wind has finally subsided, which is great news. 

It was horrific that night. I don't know if any other members of my family was awake, but I was too scared under my duvet to find out. The front door kept knocking as well. My family was weird because I don't remember having a conversation with any of them in the morning about it. 

I agree though that the darkness made the whole experience worse.

[HellItsHot]

12 minutes ago, Mike Poole said:

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

Great post. As a very casual follower of the weather I still find it incredible that science has worked out how to predict storms like this days before they even form. 

I’ve no idea whether Eunice’s intensity was down to climate change, but it seems inevitable we’re going to see many more storms like it in the next few years. 

[Kentspur]

Very intriguing day all around sunshine on and off with those storm force gusts earlier to sleet and hail this evening! This was in SE London

Edited February 18, 2022 by Kentspur

[ANYWEATHER]

I think the warnings were very much justified, yes in some people's backyard it was not so bad as others, predicting a storm like this and notifying millions of people is a huge challenge.  The models were spot on after months of poor reliability . ☺

[SP1986]

Here in Wirral it was quite a benign affair til about 12-1pm, nothing much going on at all, and given that the peak wind was supposed to have been around that time, I basically drew the curtains on it so to speak. Well I shouldn't have as after 4pm there were huge gusts, I would say that were beyond 70mph, and numerous large cracks and bangs, where damage occurred. We will see, I guess, the damage for tomorrow.

[stodge]

Evening all

Certainly an interesting day - the net loss at Stodge Towers one fence slat and one non-ridge roof tile which landed intact.

Some considerable wind gusts early afternoon in particular but a generally wild day. Interesting to see the strength of the wind unrelated to the weather conditions - it blew hard in the cloudless morning sunshine and equally hard in the afternoon cloud and squalls. Very little actual precipitation - we'll get more tomorrow I suspect.

The forecasting for London and the SE very good - unfortunately, there have been some sad incidents where individuals have suffered injury and the transport system suffered predictable disruption but we seem for now to be on the other side. It does look breezy again Monday though nowhere near what we've seen today.

[Nick L]

8 minutes ago, ANYWEATHER said:

I think the warnings were very much justified, yes in some people's backyard it was not so bad as others, predicting a storm like this and notifying millions of people is a huge challenge.  The models were spot on after months of poor reliability . ☺

They were dreadful for Arwen but pretty much all the major models played a blinder even 5 days out!

[NigelM]

23 minutes ago, D.V.R said:

 

I agree though that the darkness made the whole experience worse.

Great point.  It really was on a different level to today though - not even close.

[AndyFromDonny]

Even up here out of the worst of it the winds this afternoon have been brutal, certainly not the norm. Lots of damaged houses, fences and erm trampolines. Amazing to see how some huge and healthy trees have been toppled.

[KTtom]

5 minutes ago, Nick L said:

They were dreadful for Arwen but pretty much all the major models played a blinder even 5 days out!

To be fair to the Met and the models here, we weren't talking about a system being tracked accross the Atlantic, we were talking about a major storm warning  a couple of days before it had even been formed...sometimes we need to take our hats off imo.

[Bristawl Si]

20 minutes ago, HellItsHot said:

Great post. As a very casual follower of the weather I still find it incredible that science has worked out how to predict storms like this days before they even form. 

I’ve no idea whether Eunice’s intensity was down to climate change, but it seems inevitable we’re going to see many more storms like it in the next few years. 

"....was down to climate change"

"...seems inevitable we’re going to see many more storms like it in the next few years."

A couple of scientist views from yesterday:

Yesterday, Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, said: “Once-in-a-decade storms like Eunice are certain to batter the British Isles in the future but there is no compelling evidence that they will become more frequent or potent in terms of wind speeds.

“Yet with more intense rainfall and higher sea levels as human-caused climate change continues to heat the planet, flooding from coastal storm surges and prolonged deluges will worsen still further when these rare, explosive storms hit us in a warmer world.”

The German climatologist Friederike Otto, who leads the pioneering World Weather Attribution (WWA) service on whether droughts, major storms or heat waves were made more likely by climate change, said there was “very little evidence that winds in these winter storms have gotten stronger with climate change”.

[Mike Poole]

2 minutes ago, AndyFromDonny said:

Even up here out of the worst of it the winds this afternoon have been brutal, certainly not the norm. Lots of damaged houses, fences and erm trampolines. Amazing to see how some huge and healthy trees have been toppled.

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!

[knocker]

48 minutes ago, Mike Poole said:

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

I am not sure about the  'but we take from AROME' bit but a real-time sting-jet precursor tool for forecasters has only been developed over the last twelve months.

Abstract

Sting jets in European windstorms can cause damaging winds and gusts, but the resolution of global ensemble prediction systems is too coarse to represent them. Here we describe the development of a tool applied to outputs from these systems that forecasters can use to identify favourable conditions for sting-jet occurrence several days ahead. Plots generated by this tool have been available to Met Office forecasters since autumn 2019, and we demonstrate its usefulness for storm Brendan from January 2020.

Damaging surface winds in some European storms have been attributed to descending mesoscale airstreams termed sting jets. The development of a prototype real-time tool that Met Office forecasters can use to identify favourable conditions for sting jet occurrence in extratropical cyclones is presented. The motivation is to improve national severe weather warnings. We have previously developed a convective-instability-based tool to identify sting-jet precursors for research purposes and applied it to storms in reanalyses and climate models with insufficient spatial resolution to represent sting jets. Here we describe the challenges of applying this research-derived diagnostic to output from an operational forecast system and demonstrate its usefulness for a recent winter storm. Through close collaboration with the researchers and forecasters from the Met Office, the diagnostic has been adapted to work on output from the Met Office's operational global ensemble forecasts as it becomes available. Since autumn 2019, forecasters have been able to view graphical output informing them whether storms impacting the UK and Europe (up to 7 days in the future) have the precursor. The tool has already proven useful in informing guidance for severe weather warnings, including those issued by the Met Office's impact-based National Severe Weather Warning Service that goes out to seven days ahead and is the primary hazardous weather warning service for the public and emergency responders.

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.3889

Edited February 18, 2022 by knocker

[snowspotter]

My take on this is ….a storm yes but not really that intense (thank goodness) a few trees down here . Fence panels down ( like they always are - should invest in concrete posts !) . Is it worth all the hyperbole ??? No ….. reading on here in the build up you’d think a hurricane was coming . A flaw of the forums acting like the daily express . Basically whipping things up . Compared to 1987 (and 1990 January) a walk in the park . Incidentally just done one . 1987 I couldn’t get out of my village in Surrey , went for a cycle and got caught up in telephone cables . This doesn’t even come close ! 

[Nick L]

2 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

My take on this is ….a storm yes but not really that intense (thank goodness) a few trees down here . Fence panels down ( like they always are - should invest in concrete posts !) . Is it worth all the hyperbole ??? No ….. reading on here in the build up you’d think a hurricane was coming . A flaw of the forums acting like the daily express . Basically whipping things up . Compared to 1987 (and 1990 January) a walk in the park . Incidentally just done one . 1987 I couldn’t get out of my village in Surrey , went for a cycle and got caught up in telephone cables . This doesn’t even come close ! 

Nobody has ever said it was going to be comparable to 1987.

[snowspotter]

1 minute ago, Nick L said:

Nobody has ever said it was going to be comparable to 1987.

Don’t think I did either but there’s 144 pages of drama on here 

[HammerJack]

9 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

My take on this is ….a storm yes but not really that intense (thank goodness) a few trees down here . Fence panels down ( like they always are - should invest in concrete posts !) . Is it worth all the hyperbole ??? No ….. reading on here in the build up you’d think a hurricane was coming . A flaw of the forums acting like the daily express . Basically whipping things up . Compared to 1987 (and 1990 January) a walk in the park . Incidentally just done one . 1987 I couldn’t get out of my village in Surrey , went for a cycle and got caught up in telephone cables . This doesn’t even come close ! 

I’m sure the families of people who died today might have a different take on todays storm!!

 

Maybe people did listen to the MO warnings and the “Hyperbole” on here and stayed home if they possibly could. Im sure this has averted more injuries or death.

[mountain shadow]

11 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

Don’t think I did either but there’s 144 pages of drama on here 

It's a weather forum, maybe this site isn't for you.

[Nick F]

 

Had to come home to Surrey from my parents in Kent this evening, as they lost electricity this afternoon and are still without power in their village. 

Managed to get down to the beach at Folkestone to watch the sea for a bit after the red warning ended and winds moderated a bit, was bracing but nice to clear the head after being stuck indoors during the height of the storm 

[Crackerjack]

1 hour ago, JamesL said:

A squally shower coming through this afternoon with soft hail and snow. Temp Circa 3c in Cwmbach around 450’ asl 

Love your garden mate I’m having mine remodelled early March with Easygrass and new fencing so wasn’t overly concerned today when I lost one of the old panels

[Dbarb]

Whole village has been without power for over 9 hours