Storm Eunice - 18th February

[DaveL]

16 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

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

That's completely unsurprising for a once in a decade or two event, the only surprise is that anyone is surprised by that.

[ANYWEATHER]

43 minutes ago, Nick L said:

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

Nick, I think models do a great job when coming in from the Atlantic a normal default   but soon as the jet buckles over the UK then models really struggle with any detail. Come to that the models struggle with any blocking situations generally but hats off to the models this time☺☺

[snowspotter]

9 minutes ago, mountain shadow said:

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

Oh no I love a good weather forum been on here since 2003 . Just saying it’s been hyperboled too much . Let’s be frank some people actually believe stuff on here and panic at every opportunity. I’m just posting reality 

[Crackerjack]

4 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

Oh no I love a good weather forum been on here since 2003 . Just saying it’s been hyperboled too much . Let’s be frank some people actually believe stuff on here and panic at every opportunity. I’m just posting reality 

Storm Eunice: At least three people killed in UK as 200,000 left without power

NEWS.SKY.COM

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Extreme weather leaves more than 200,000 homes without power and forces schools and businesses to shut, while also causing major travel disruption with road closures and the...

 

[Guest]

33 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 ! 

How many would need to lose their lives before the hyperbole was justified, in your opinion? 

7 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

Oh no I love a good weather forum been on here since 2003 . Just saying it’s been hyperboled too much . Let’s be frank some people actually believe stuff on here and panic at every opportunity. I’m just posting reality 

The reality is there is a swathe of significant damage (not just fence panels, I might add) across the country and three lives lost. 

[Man With Beard]

1 hour ago, DaveL said:

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.

 

Just for your own interest, the BBC shared a diagram earlier that had Southampton airport down for a max gust of 79mph today.

[snowspotter]

27 minutes ago, HammerJack said:

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.

Absolutely. But it wasn’t the storm it was built up to be on here was it? That’s my point 

[Ross90]

The 200k without power would have been a lot higher had there been widespread 80/90 winds across the southern half of the UK. Arwen had a higher percentage without power compared to percentage of the population that it affected.

[Man With Beard]

1 hour 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 Mike.

Once again, I was struck that the GFS had done a pretty good job. It never got carried away with the silly figures that even the UKV or UKMO was coming up with. On the day, I'd guess it was fairly close to the mark, except for a few coastal areas which it was a little low for.

[Captain Shortwave]

Looks like RAF Wittering recorded a highest gust of 67mph (Though I suspect some areas nearby may have reached the 70mph mark). Pretty much as forecast for here and thankfully the sting jet didn’t materialise. However we do have a tree down on the A15 leaving Peterborough towards the A1 so a troublesome evening.

Overall it could have been a lot worse here, however areas further south have fared much worse. In some places this was a major event (Great than a 1 in 10 year event, possibly 1 in 50), especially across London and the south coast.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Captain Shortwave

[snowspotter]

10 minutes ago, Steel City Skies said:

How many would need to lose their lives before the hyperbole was justified, in your opinion? 

The reality is there is a swathe of significant damage (not just fence panels, I might add) across the country and three lives lost. 

Blimey I’ve created some angst here lol. Hyperbole is hyperbole it’s not measured in deaths and I told you so comments . I’m just going by the damage in comparison with what people were going on about . You won’t be talking about this storm in 30 years will ya ??? End of 

[Man With Beard]

1 minute ago, snowspotter said:

Absolutely. But it wasn’t the storm it was built up to be on here was it? That’s my point 

But we broke the English wind speed record? It's not as if The Needles weather station is a new station, it's been there since 1996, so clearly the strongest storm in the English Channel since then? 

[Nick L]

Just now, snowspotter said:

Blimey I’ve created some angst here lol. Hyperbole is hyperbole it’s not measured in deaths and I told you so comments . I’m just going by the damage in comparison with what people were going on about . You won’t be talking about this storm in 30 years will ya ??? End of 

How damaging did it need to be to be justified? I'm curious.

[HammerJack]

3 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

Absolutely. But it wasn’t the storm it was built up to be on here was it? That’s my point 

I guess not in my location (which I’m happy about) even though it was quite scary at some points. But for the rest of the south I’m not to sure

[KTtom]

8 minutes ago, Man With Beard said:

Great post Mike.

Once again, I was struck that the GFS had done a pretty good job. It never got carried away with the silly figures that even the UKV or UKMO was coming up with. On the day, I'd guess it was fairly close to the mark, except for a few coastal areas which it was a little low for.

Couldnt agree more..i was sleepless last night with some of the gusts being shown on models in this thread..in reality the met got it closer ..a questionable 81 recorded here, the next highest was 70. One thing im sure of, far fewer deaths today than occur from BFTE 2018...yet we all crave another....perspective

Edited February 18, 2022 by KTtom

[snowspotter]

Just now, Nick L said:

How damaging did it need to be to be justified? I'm curious.

I’ve already closed having a pointless argument buddy . The curious case of Benjamin button ( is it a major storm ) is done have a great evening on here debating it 

[MattStoke]

1 minute ago, Nick L said:

How damaging did it need to be to be justified? I'm curious.

More than thousands of felled trees, power cuts, 4 deaths, numerous injuries, structural damage, the strongest English wind gust on record, and coastal floods, apparently.

Less warning would have resulted in more deaths. Maybe that at least might have satisfied those who moan that it was overhyped.

[Man With Beard]

54 minutes ago, knocker said:

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

Thanks Knocker. It does seem the AROME and ARPEGE had a go at modelling a sting jet, but didn't get it right. From satellite imagery today, it looks like there may have been some kind of brush with a sting jet but not one that significantly lifted the wind speed. 

[Atmogenic]

55 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 ! 

it would be a walk in the park if it wasn't blocked by fallen trees.. 

[Wold Topper]

2 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

I’ve already closed having a pointless argument buddy . The curious case of Benjamin button ( is it a major storm ) is done have a great evening on here debating it 

So you just popped on this thread to be a WUM, a bit pointless really, as you proved with you last comment!

[kold weather]

11 minutes ago, snowspotter said:

Blimey I’ve created some angst here lol. Hyperbole is hyperbole it’s not measured in deaths and I told you so comments . I’m just going by the damage in comparison with what people were going on about . You won’t be talking about this storm in 30 years will ya ??? End of 

What an interesting comment at the end.

It broke a *record* of course it will be remembered. Probably long past the burns day storm for that reason alone.

Let alone it being a daytime red alert, lots of travel disruption, several major structures damaged, etc. The pictures of the 02 arena being ripped apart will be around in 30 years I bet any money.. 

Edited February 18, 2022 by kold weather

[Mapantz]

Whenever a storm like this moves through and dies down, I always get a come-down, of sorts. Reminds me of the feeling I'd get after Dreamscape or Fusion.. 

[snowspotter]

2 minutes ago, kold weather said:

What an interesting comment at the end.

It broke a *record* of course it will be remembered. Probably long past the burns day storm for that reason alone.

Let alone it being a daytime red alert, lots of travel disruption, several major structures damaged, etc. The pictures of the 02 arena being ripped apart will be around in 30 years I bet any money.. 

I’d like to check but I probably won’t be about in 30 years . Maybe the speed record will be remembered  

[sunnijim]

17 minutes ago, Captain Shortwave said:

Looks like RAF Wittering recorded a highest gust of 67mph (Though I suspect some areas nearby may have reached the 70mph mark). Pretty much as forecast for here and thankfully the sting jet didn’t materialise. However we do have a tree down on the A15 leaving Peterborough towards the A1 so a troublesome evening.

Overall it could have been a lot worse here, however areas further south have fared much worse. In some places this was a major event (Great than a 1 in 10 year event, possibly 1 in 50), especially across London and the south coast.

No way was it a one in 50 year event on the South Coast.We had comparable speeds and duration in 2016.

[LeeKay/]

4 minutes ago, Mapantz said:

Whenever a storm like this moves through and dies down, I always get a come-down, of sorts. Reminds me of the feeling I'd get after Dreamscape or Fusion.. 

Ha Haa The Eclipse was mine loool !

Lost a couple of roof tiles 3pm ish was some howling gusts here.

Edited February 18, 2022 by LeeKay/
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