Storm Eunice - 18th February

[sunnijim]

Re warning system.

The two red warnings this time were issued for impacts  in London and the Southeast ( density of population)rather than the force of the wind,where as the Southwest red appeared to be for impact ( flooding) and higher winds.

Amber areas were forecast to get wind strengths of similar values to Southeast red.

So there is a need imo to be a little clearer on what red actually means on each occasion.

You are faced with a situation in Exeter ( Amber) and a large city getting stronger gusts yesterday than the red London.

How can that be right?

[magic]

10 hours ago, SnowBear said:

I note many are saying there is a need for an overhaul of the Met Office warning system. 

What and how do people think this needs to change?

Is it the system or perhaps the communication of that system to the public? 

What system would you use? 

(Mods, if you feels this warrants a separate thread, please do split this post off into a new one.) 

Just a thought:

It could be worth considering the lower end of the scale.

My, admittedly very small sample size in a relatively sheltered area, impression form people is that a yellow warning is just background noise and an amber is "nothing serious", "only one up from a yellow". The idea of a red warning seems to have the desired effect.

If a fair chunk of what is currently yellow was a 'Weather Watch' then Joe public would continue to ignore that but an eyeball may wander at the word 'warning'. That could allow the warnings to spread out a bit - weaker ambers could be yellow which would make amber rarer and feel more noteworthy (for the otherwise uninterested).

[Methuselah]

15 minutes ago, magic said:

Just a thought:

It could be worth considering the lower end of the scale.

My, admittedly very small sample size in a relatively sheltered area, impression form people is that a yellow warning is just background noise and an amber is "nothing serious", "only one up from a yellow". The idea of a red warning seems to have the desired effect.

If a fair chunk of what is currently yellow was a 'Weather Watch' then Joe public would continue to ignore that but an eyeball may wander at the word 'warning'. That could allow the warnings to spread out a bit - weaker ambers could be yellow which would make amber rarer and feel more noteworthy (for the otherwise uninterested).

Given the complex, chaotic and fractal nature of weather, I'd say that anyone demanding pinpoint accuracy (only from the UK Met) is deluded? Next step: selling top-of-the-range snake-oil to the unwary?

[MJB]

I thought it all went as planned with regards forecasts and the Met did ok .

These things are so hard to predict , let's remember a red warning for an area isn't for the whole area to experience red warning type weather ( if that makes sense ) its for the potential for it to occur .  

[Stationary Front]

Better to be safe than sorry, in the end, whilst under an amber warning we had ave wind speed of 15mph with a max gust of 48mph

[Ross90]

Wind warnings are quite inconsistent, i've had amber warnings in my area that were nothing more than a breezy day. I'm not really sure how to better them though because somebody in a higher part of the area could have been experiencing amber worthy winds. By their nature it's very hard to be precise with where the strongest winds will be so the warnings have to cover that whole region. 

[The PIT]

12 minutes ago, Stationary Front said:

Better to be safe than sorry, in the end, whilst under an amber warning we had ave wind speed of 15mph with a max gust of 48mph

Ever heard of cry wolf.

Rather than impact it should be based on the strength of the storm . Leaving a warning  at yellow because it will only effect a few sheep and a small village or everyone is tucked up in bed leads to a false sense of security.

My only other gripe and the same for years is that they are too slow too update especially when it's clear things aren't happening at all. Another bug is when they have a warning on the internet local forecast say for heavy rain but the forecast below it shows bright sunny weather all day.

[SnowBear]

2 minutes ago, Ross90 said:

Wind warnings are quite inconsistent, i've had amber warnings in my area that were nothing more than a breezy day. I'm not really sure how to better them though because somebody in a higher part of the area could have been experiencing amber worthy winds. By their nature it's very hard to be precise with where the strongest winds will be so the warnings have to cover that whole region. 

This I think is absolutely right. Our island has such a varied landscape that warnings are very difficult to be that precise for any one location. 

Additonally with a weather system as large as our islands, but within that system are complex features which are hard to predict where they will occur, even 50 miles out on a forecast can make a lot of difference on the day. 

[stainesbloke]

Eunice has been affecting us in the Czech Republic with very gusty conditions since late last night. Mean winds are in the upper 30’s mph with gusts up to 60mph. It’s not as bad as Dudley, however, which caused more problems and damage.

Edited February 19, 2022 by stainesbloke

[Arctic Hare]

1 hour ago, magic said:

Just a thought:

It could be worth considering the lower end of the scale.

My, admittedly very small sample size in a relatively sheltered area, impression form people is that a yellow warning is just background noise and an amber is "nothing serious", "only one up from a yellow". The idea of a red warning seems to have the desired effect.

If a fair chunk of what is currently yellow was a 'Weather Watch' then Joe public would continue to ignore that but an eyeball may wander at the word 'warning'. That could allow the warnings to spread out a bit - weaker ambers could be yellow which would make amber rarer and feel more noteworthy (for the otherwise uninterested).

It's a tricky one. This is what has in fact happened with flood warnings. Some years ago the levels for those were yellow, then orange, then red at the top. Nowadays it's Flood Alert, Flood Warning, Severe Flood Warning. However my distinct impression is that, apart from people living right next to the river, most people take no more notice of a Flood Alert for the River Severn here than they do of a yellow weather warning.

Someone on here yesterday suggested taking something from the American hurricane alerts and splitting Watches and Warnings - so over there you can have a Hurricane *Watch* and a Tropical Storm *Warning* at the same time. So with this setup, the Met Office could have issued a "Red Watch" for SE England on Thursday night but kept the Amber *Warning*, and only moved to a "Red Warning" in the early hours of Friday, when the actual red was issued. I know some people say this may be confusing and I get that point, but having both Watches and Warnings seems to work in the US.

I think a bigger problem may be what I mentioned above, that like "Alert", the word "Watch" doesn't feel urgent to many people while "Warning" does. Realistically with the unpredictability inherent in UK weather, there's never going to be a system that works perfectly every time. I think the Met Office did a pretty good job with Eunice and while you can debate whether certain specific calls were exactly right, they were spot on that this would likely be a very damaging storm in many southern areas.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Arctic Hare

[Snowyowl9]

44 minutes ago, Stationary Front said:

Better to be safe than sorry, in the end, whilst under an amber warning we had ave wind speed of 15mph with a max gust of 48mph

The amber were forecasting 60 to 80mph gusts...

Low ended up further south and didn t end up quite as severe as models shown the day before on the 12z run..

[Man With Beard]

I finally had a chance to look around Fareham at the damage. An interesting lesson in topography! The worst damage was ... on my street! Most people in my street have something financial to deal with after yesterday (fences/roofs), and a tree snapped clean in half behind us. But elsewhere not so bad ... but our street is on a tiny incline, about 5-10 metres above other streets in the area, with nothing blocking our path to the SW for nearly a mile. I haven't lived on this street long, and, good grief, I've realised I've moved to a storm-trap street!!! (Wish it was a snow trap )

Which feeds into what someone else said about warnings - impacts are going to vary even within a few hundred metres, let alone miles. Tough to get the forecast right for all.

[johnholmes]

Saw this on an ex met folks site, very funny

 

[johnholmes]

3 hours ago, sunnijim said:

Re warning system.

The two red warnings this time were issued for impacts  in London and the Southeast ( density of population)rather than the force of the wind,where as the Southwest red appeared to be for impact ( flooding) and higher winds.

Amber areas were forecast to get wind strengths of similar values to Southeast red.

So there is a need imo to be a little clearer on what red actually means on each occasion.

You are faced with a situation in Exeter ( Amber) and a large city getting stronger gusts yesterday than the red London.

How can that be right?

I think you have a point, but it is very very difficult to get the correct message across. What one person 'sees' another 'sees' something not the same.

[DaveL]

49 minutes ago, Snowyowl9 said:

The amber were forecasting 60 to 80mph gusts...

Low ended up further south and didn t end up quite as severe as models shown the day before on the 12z run..

 

And yet Walney Island (Barrow) hit 74 mph in mid afternoon, which caught many up there by surprise (I had a worried phone call from a daughter up there). That's higher than Bristol Lulsgate, Southampton Airport and quite a few other places reported - some in the Red warning areas. But there were large variations even within small areas in the same warning zone: Southampton Docks was reported variously as 79 mph and 79 KNOTS while the airport a bit further inland was in the 60s.

Very very hard to get these forecasts right for everyone, especially on peak gust speeds.

 

[alexisj9]

18 hours ago, NigelM said:

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

Didn't sound anywhere near the same, but may be that's double glazing, but I don't think so. Think the closest I've ever heard to 87 is when watching hurricane feeds, the strong wind at least where I was, was very consistent, not gusty, with an occasional boom where a very harsh gust came through the also lasted much longer than a normal gust. Closest would have been near the end of yesterday's storm down here, when the sustained was roughly about 30\40 but the gusts had stopped mostly, but occasionally one banged through. Like the but I'd say add twenty to 30 mph to the sustained speed, and 20 to 30 mph to the gusts.

[alexisj9]

18 hours ago, snowspotter said:

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

It was in Kent. And I'm quite sure it was else where too. Still people without power now, what exactly does a wind storm have to do, effect everywhere very badly?

[alexisj9]

18 hours ago, Ross90 said:

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.

A lot of the south has underground power cables, so in essence the power goes out in places which still have pylons that can go over, or where a substation gets damaged somehow, whether through flooding or a tree falling, or something. I think however we did dodge a bullet, with how the low developed, which again left the worst for countries east of us. If it didn't go broad as it did, would have been much stronger. Even so there was a very tight squeeze of the isobars south of the storm.

[alexisj9]

16 hours ago, Roger J Smith said:

With the 1987 storm, was there not a well-organized squall line that was the focus of the strongest wind gusts? I realize it kept blowing at strong levels for hours after that, but the squall line feature was probably what separates these two events more than the peak winds observed. 

I wonder if storm Eunice perhaps resembles to some extent the Defoe storm of 1703, if you imagine today's events in the context of the maritime and land conditions of that era, similar outcomes might have been found. Different today more because of better building standards and the warnings to maritime traffic, combined with not having a sailing ship fleet in harm's way. The 1703 storm had probably a greater storm surge into the Severn estuary but it happened at a perigeean new moon which would create a higher storm surge from the same storm conditions (today being 48h after a full moon). Historical trivia, most would recall the 1703 storm as occurring 26-27 Nov, but that was in the Julian calendar, in the Gregorian calendar it was 7-8 Dec. To be more precise, I would estimate today's storm might be something like a 90% scale model of the 1703 storm. 

Hmm, that squall is probably what I remember re 87, I know there was lots of heavy rain lot's of flashing when I woke, as well as the wind, but no thunder that's the biggest thing I remember. People keep saying it was power flashes may be for some of them, but the one's in my yard were defo lightning, as I could see it, and one hit my window.

Edited February 19, 2022 by alexisj9

[Snowyowl9]

3 hours ago, DaveL said:

 

And yet Walney Island (Barrow) hit 74 mph in mid afternoon, which caught many up there by surprise (I had a worried phone call from a daughter up there). That's higher than Bristol Lulsgate, Southampton Airport and quite a few other places reported - some in the Red warning areas. But there were large variations even within small areas in the same warning zone: Southampton Docks was reported variously as 79 mph and 79 KNOTS while the airport a bit further inland was in the 60s.

Very very hard to get these forecasts right for everyone, especially on peak gust speeds.

 

The SW south and east midlands east got hit the hardest this time...

Burns day storm was a similar event and tracking orientation probably why that missed here too the stormiest part but I rate that quite alot higher in windspeeds  to yesterdays.

[ModestMention]

I went for a drive around today. Redlynch (Wilts) Dowton, Hamptworth and Hale lots of tree damage and some building damage. Fordingbridge, barely any.  Also went for a walk at Whitsbury Downs, where they train horses and is high and open with a few stands of trees, none of them were down, and a little damage to fences. But the road from Fordingbridge to Whitsbury had quite a few trees. 

I'm not sure what is means, but it was certainly localised and not in areas you'd expect to be more affected. 

[Zak M]

It was pretty windy out.

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Zak M

[Evening thunder]

Post-mortem in East Devon where I have been the last few days:

A notable event, not seen spray whipped up off the sea in Sidmouth before when I've been there (not just from waves). However, this area is bit more sheltered due to geography in West/SW winds compared to southerly winds. Exeter Airport had a highest gust of 69mph. I noticed Exmouth NCI had 78 mph after it had turned westerly, quite impressive for a non-standard height Vantage Vue on a westerly wind in that location.

I've seen a few trees and branches down, though not loads. I don't think this beats February 2014 here, as that saw patches of plantation conifers mostly felled, which doesn't seem to have happened this time despite some similar wind speed measurements (Eunice was higher at Exeter Airport apparently). However, a nearby weather station measured 70mph in 2014 and 63mph yesterday.

 

In terms of Met Office warning, I think amber was about right for this location. Apart from maybe the times of issuing, I feel they got the warning areas about right. Any other warning system would have at least some of the criticisms directed at the current system since it is accused by some of being too complicated/messy, and by others of being not informative enough..

Edited February 19, 2022 by Evening thunder

[Nick L]

Really good graphic by Dan Holley that pours cold water over the "just a normal windy day" nonsense posts we've seen...Very much a once in 20-30 year storm for the south.

[Man With Beard]

12 minutes ago, Nick L said:

Really good graphic by Dan Holley that pours cold water over the "just a normal windy day" nonsense posts we've seen...Very much a once in 20-30 year storm for the south.

Great graphic but it's odd our posters from Sussex seemed to think it had been no big deal!