The Great Storm of Wednesday 12/02/2014

BuilderPlumber · 13-02-2014 9:04pm

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

No-one at work on Tuesday seemed to have any idea that this was coming. I parked in a more sheltered place than usual deliberately, as my usual spot is next to some bushes that I thought would scratch the car up. People at work cycled in, not knowing that the afternoon would be a warzone.

I live in Dublin16 so am nicely sheltered. My weather station only picked up about 55kmh gust, less than the 85kmh I got last April in a storm.

I had checked met Eireann 5 day forecast for Cork and it was a red and yellow colour depending what part. I assumed a storm not a blooming hurricane! Yes, this awful weather event was not forecast to be this bad and was a surprise.

BuilderPlumber · 13-02-2014 9:32pm

John.Icy wrote: »

I keep reading how this storm was the worst for many since 1997.

As I wasn't very into the weather in 2007, can I get some people's opinions on storm Kyrill from 2007?

93

This was certainly the worst windy weather (storm is not the word, it was a hurricane) since 1997 and 1998. It was worse than the 2013 St Stephen's day storm by a longshot. What was also unusual was that this was not within the usual October-December storm cycle and in February, a month that rarely sees wind let alone storms not to mention a hurricane. But it is these totally weird weather patterns that we should be most worried about. The poor weather has been with us since mid December with storms, excessive rain, snow showers and lightening all common over the past 2 months. The weather has felt more preChristmas in many ways. People blame global warming, climate change, comets, the jet stream, etc. for what goes on but every few years, we get some weird weather untypical of the usual.

Hurricanes are not typical of Ireland and either are tornadoes. Yet, we got them and in February, a month where snowfalls that melt quickly, rain and bright sunny days with cold nights are more common than regular storms or gales. But, this was not the only bizarre or unseasonal weather we got.

August 1997: Rain is very common in Ireland. But not 5 days non-stop of it (and I MEAN non stop and not 5 consecutive days of rain with respites - I mean where it rained non-stop for 120+ hours) is. Yet, that's what we got in Clonmel, Kerry, all the South coast and Cork and many other places between the Saturday night of the August bank holiday weekend until the following Thursday morning.
The summer and autumn of 1997: 1997 started off with exceptionally cold weather in January, with a normal mild spring afterwards. However, it was one of the wettest summers and the autumn did not let up and added wind. El Nino was to blame. A warning of a very severe event was on the cards with a cycle of stormy and wet weather in October, November and December. Like yesterday, the worst 'storm' (hurricane) was coming.
Christmas eve 1997: Usually, Christmas time (even last year before St Stephen's day) is cold and dry, or mild and dry. Not this year. The most violent wind devastated large swathes of the country with roofs, sheds, trees, etc. all damaged and power supplies off for a week in many places. Christmas was ruined. Never before or after until yesterday do I remember anything as bad. Poor conditions remained up until mid January that year.
1998: a very cold April and dry cold summer. I remember the IRA, David Trimble and those wonderful Irish and British leaders Bertie and Tony signing the good Friday agreement and it being frosty and around -3 outside and it April. The summer that followed was dry and sunny ... but very cold and showery. In the grand scheme of things, ok weather!!
Summers 1995, 2003 and 2013: A hot summer is said to common every decade. These summers were our best but we have often paid for them (see below).
February and March 2004: Very cold, getting to -10 in some place. Dry. It would be the coldest weather until 2009. Christmas around 1995-96 was also very cold, the followup from a good summer too?
Autumn 2004: Very wet and windy, following on from an unremarkable and rather cool summer. Flooding often in many places.
20??: Some year recently I remember awful downpours that flooded Cork. UCC was hit bad.
January-February 2009: Very cold with -6 to -10 often. Snow in places that lasted. Worst cold weather since 2004.
December2009-January2010: More very cold and snowy weather.
November/December 2010: The cold weather in 2004, 2009 and earlier in 2010 paled compared to the month of snow, ice and subzero temperatures of -10 that lasted an entire month. The following months in 2011 were then extremely mild as was the winters of 2011/12 and 2012/13.
March-May 2013: Very cold with some snow. Very very cold for the time of year and a precursor to a hot summer.

Was the hot summer the reason for the current cycle of awful weather? Or was it the jet stream, global warming or other climate change? OR is it just another cycle of weather with Ireland/other countries being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Harps · 13-02-2014 9:44pm

tphase wrote: »

A quick plot of wind speed data from my met station. Blue dots are one minute means, red are the gust speeds for each minute

Impressive stuff, what was your max gust? Looks to be about 170kph if I'm reading that right

John.Icy wrote: »

I keep reading how this storm was the worst for many since 1997.

As I wasn't very into the weather in 2007, can I get some people's opinions on storm Kyrill from 2007?

93mph gust in Dublin, so I'm sure many other places saw high winds? Why do we never reference this clear beast of a storm, and always go back to 1997 to reference gusts? (Don't know peak gusts for 1997, although I know it was more sustained)

EDIT: Looking at the monthly report from 2007 I can see that Dublin and Casement were pretty big outliers and gusts elsewhere bar the usual North/West culprits were mediocre. Question answered!

Yesterday's storm wasn't as severe as 97 (max gust of 88kts at Valentina and sustained storm force in Dublin). The 1998 storm, while it didn't affect the south as much was more severe again with three stations above 90kts and hurricane force across the north west, even stations 50 miles inland recorded sustained storm force

irishfeen · 13-02-2014 10:42pm

Electricity still out here in N.Cork - it's kind of getting sickening now

... Very strange driving through the local village and the place pitch dark including the pubs - eerily quiet .... Roads in a bad way already, could be very bad in the morning for driving.

eireannBEAR · 13-02-2014 10:44pm

irishfeen wrote: »

Electricity still out here in N.Cork - it's kind of getting sickening now ... Very strange driving through the local village and the place pitch dark including the pubs - eerily quiet .

Going by the tomorrows forecast its unlikely you will get it back,And if you do it wont be for long.

Oneiric 3 · 13-02-2014 10:55pm

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

Was the hot summer the reason for the current cycle of awful weather? Or was it the jet stream, global warming or other climate change? OR is it just another cycle of weather with Ireland/other countries being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

I recall reading a book by Hubert Lamb one time in which he wrote that winter's in NW Europe became increasingly stormy and wet shortly before the onset of the last Ice Age. :eek:

A wild winter for sure this year (for some anyway) but I am sure there has been worse down throughout history.

tphase · 13-02-2014 11:37pm

Harps wrote: »

Impressive stuff, what was your max gust? Looks to be about 170kph if I'm reading that right.

48.4 m/s at 14:04
94kts in old money:) or 174kph

Edit: For completeness, I would add the nearest ME station recorded 84kts, I'd be interested to see how their one minute data compares.

Red Nissan · 13-02-2014 11:43pm

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

Was the hot summer the reason for the current cycle of awful weather? Or was it the jet stream, global warming or other climate change? OR is it just another cycle of weather with Ireland/other countries being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Find on of MT's posts in the last two days, he does an excellent job in answering that exact question.

There are a number4 of triggers, but the key driver is the jet stream. We also had a pathetic 2013 hurricane season in the Atlantic so the water has retained a large amount of heat, so storms coming off the cold North America have plenty of unusually warm water to interact with and they spin up violently in almost every disturbance, they are then channeled to us by the 'stuck' jet stream.

Keep in mind that weather has one purpose, to bring equilibrium. If one place is cold, warm air is drawn in to mellow it. If the sea is warm it spawns violent storms to stir it up and cool it.

miss no stars · 13-02-2014 11:49pm

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

This was certainly the worst windy weather (storm is not the word, it was a hurricane) since 1997 and 1998.

Serious question, was it a hurricane? I thought it was a fairly bog standard cold air brought down hits warm air and starts to spin... Albeit with a lot of energy. Was there more to it than that?

Red Nissan · 13-02-2014 11:54pm

miss no stars wrote: »

Serious question, was it a hurricane?

Technically, no. It was an extra tropical cyclone that was well defined as it struck.

BuilderPlumber · 14-02-2014 12:08am

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

I recall reading a book by Hubert Lamb one time in which he wrote that winter's in NW Europe became increasingly stormy and wet shortly before the onset of the last Ice Age. :eek:

A wild winter for sure this year (for some anyway) but I am sure there has been worse down throughout history.

It is hard to know how our weather will pan out. Yes, I heard that mild, wet, stormy weather preceded the ice age and there is so much talk of global warming and global cooling. Hence the term climate change. Over the last decades, our weather has shown the following pattern:

1986-1994: generally, wet summers with mixed winters. Some winters saw snow, more saw wind predominate.
1995: Normal early spring, colder than usual April and May, very hot summer (up until November), very cold December.
1996: Cold start with snow. February-May saw normal weather. Above average summer. Ordinary winter, very cold in later December.
1997: Very cold January. Normal spring. Exceptionally wet summer. Exceptionally windy and wet autumn and winter. Violent hurricanes at Christmas and 5 days nonstop rain being some of the extremes.
1998: Windy mild start, normal February and March. Very cold April and summer. Normal autumn and early winter. Extremely stormy in December, especially at Christmas and a repeat of 1997 with hurricanes on St Stephen's day.
1999: A normal January-May, a good summer and an ok enough winter until Christmas. Stormy at Christmas but nothing like 1997 or 1998.
2000: A cold start with snow. February to May was generally normal. An above average summer. An ok autumn and winter. Not much wind or extremes.
2001: Generally, a normal year with nothing too hectic weatherwise. I don't really remember much about the winter weather, as the winter belonged to the drug dealer terrorists from Afghanistan who did 9/11, the subsequent anthrax, etc. events, and to GW Bush's invasion of Taliban Afghanistan.
2002: Normal January and spring. Very wet and miserable summer. Normal autumn and winter.
2003: Exceptionally good weather more or less the whole year.
2004: Very mild January, very very cold from February to April followed by a cold, dryish summer. Very wet and windy autumn, winter was mixed but no extremes.
2005: Cold, wet and windy January. February-April were normal. May was cold. Summer was above average. Autumn and Winter were ok too.
2006: Spring was overall ok. Nothing major. Summer was above average. Autumn was fairly wet and miserable and the winter was wet but nothing too major.
2007: Normal for the first few months with rain and a good sunny period in March-April. A horrible, wet summer with some good weather only in late August to September. Autumn and winter were normal.
2008: A virtual repeat of 2007.
2009: Very cold start and end with some fine weather in the late spring and the especially the lovely spell we got that September and horrid 2007/2008-style summer.
2010: Cold start, remaining cold well into April. From mid April to September, we got overall a lot of nice weather. Very very cold November culminating in the worst snow storms for decades that lasted for a full month. A white Christmas in most places!
2011: Very mild January and February. Summery weather in March and April, a mixed summer with rain and showers along with some nice periods. A wetter than usual September followed by the mildest winter in 3 years.
2012: A mild early part of the year with summer like condition in March. April was very cold and the summer was overall a poor one with either prolonged rain or showers a feature most days. A mild and noneventful latter part of the year.
2013: Mild January and February. Very cold March to May. The best summer in 10 years lasting more or less up until November, apart from a few wet weeks in September. Very stormy and wet December.
2014: January was stormy and wet but milder than usual. Some nice weather later in the month. February has seen violent hurricanes and mild natured sunny days with cold nights side by side. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde type month for sure so far!!
March to DEcember?? 2015-??

Chris The Hacker · 14-02-2014 12:39am

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

This was certainly the worst windy weather (storm is not the word, it was a hurricane) since 1997 and 1998.

Could you explain how this storm was a hurricane?

Birroc · 14-02-2014 1:06am

Its weird but I kinda feel cheated by this storm. One of the worst storm in Ireland and it kinda passed me by. Didn't really feel the force of it in Galway and saw very little signs of damage afterwards. Not even a few twigs on the road.

tiegan · 14-02-2014 1:55am

Birroc wrote: »

Its weird but I kinda feel cheated by this storm. One of the worst storm in Ireland and it kinda passed me by. Didn't really feel the force of it in Galway and saw very little signs of damage afterwards. Not even a few twigs on the road.

I would not be feeling cheated if I missed it - terrible damage and very frightening - And to think I also was excited by the prospect of a storm!! Was defo a case of be careful what you wish for!!

Harps · 14-02-2014 7:07am

miss no stars wrote: »

Serious question, was it a hurricane? I thought it was a fairly bog standard cold air brought down hits warm air and starts to spin... Albeit with a lot of energy. Was there more to it than that?

Hurricanes are a completely different beast, they start their lives as thunderstorms that grow so big that they start to spin because of the coriolis effect. They only form over tropical seas and suck up all the warm air and moisture. I've never experienced one but generally they're much stronger that the storms we get here, much stronger winds, massive storm surges and proper torrential rain for hours during the strongest winds.

Its next to impossible to get a real hurricane in Ireland because of the cool seas we have, Debbie in 1961 which traveled straight towards us from the Azores is probably the closest we've come

whitebriar · 14-02-2014 8:40am

Still no power in my part of South Wicklow.

Gmol · 14-02-2014 8:52am

whitebriar wrote: »

Still no power in my part of South Wicklow.

Where are you? It's on in arklow.

ch750536 · 14-02-2014 9:08am

Time for leccy & water to come back on please.

whitebriar · 14-02-2014 9:57am

Gmol wrote: »

Where are you? It's on in arklow.

Rural,outside Arklow, off since about 3pm wenesday.
Rang them 3 times yesterday.

Villain · 14-02-2014 10:48am

High res Sat image from Wednesday of storm

Full image available at http://carlowweather.com/storm12th.jpg

Image from
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). Caption by Adam Voiland.

More info: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=83127

Instrument: Terra - MODIS

Colonialboy · 14-02-2014 11:12am

Anyone know if they found Water on Mars yet, or traces of protoplasm in the far regions of the galaxy.
I hear thats the real important stuff.:rolleyes:

Its not like we need to look after whats going on on THIS planet ... :mad:

miss no stars · 14-02-2014 11:38am

Harps wrote: »

Hurricanes are a completely different beast, they start their lives as thunderstorms that grow so big that they start to spin because of the coriolis effect. They only form over tropical seas and suck up all the warm air and moisture. I've never experienced one but generally they're much stronger that the storms we get here, much stronger winds, massive storm surges and proper torrential rain for hours during the strongest winds.

Its next to impossible to get a real hurricane in Ireland because of the cool seas we have, Debbie in 1961 which traveled straight towards us from the Azores is probably the closest we've come

That's what I thought alright, but then I saw someone saying very assertively that it was a hurricane and I was wondering if I had missed something!

Popoutman · 14-02-2014 1:17pm

Was there a sting jet feature or not? Or will that take more analysis?

DOCARCH · 14-02-2014 1:22pm

Popoutman wrote: »

Was there a sting jet feature or not? Or will that take more analysis?

Definitely the characteristics of some sort of sting jet...and/or possibly elements of a quasi linear convective system mesovortice.

Tom Cruises Left Nut · 14-02-2014 1:24pm

DOCARCH wrote: »

Definitely the characteristics of some sort of sting jet...and/or possibly elements of a quasi linear convective system mesovortice.

What he said :pac:

Iancar29 · 14-02-2014 1:29pm

Villain wrote: »

High res Sat image from Wednesday of storm

Full image available at http://carlowweather.com/storm12th.jpg

Image from
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). Caption by Adam Voiland.

More info: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=83127

Instrument: Terra - MODIS

Soooo printing this bad boy and adding it to my weather wall!

:pac: ...
.... ...

.... yes... i do have a weather wall

EDIT : just noticed on there main page they have a 55mb tiff file version toO! lol

DOCARCH · 14-02-2014 1:45pm

Iancar29 wrote: »

.... yes... i do have a weather wall

Pics please of your weather wall....or....you konw!!!....GTF!

If you have weather going on in your house, even if it is static, you need to share it!

Irish Steve · 14-02-2014 1:53pm

Villain wrote: »

High res Sat image from Wednesday of storm

Full image available at http://carlowweather.com/storm12th.jpg

Image from
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data from the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). Caption by Adam Voiland.

More info: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=83127

Instrument: Terra - MODIS

What stands out very noticeably on that picture is the low within the low that's forming in the south west corner of the core, which might well explain some of the more vicious gusts that went through the south west, as by the look of it, that extra twist in the centre is somewhere over Clare/Limerick area. Spectacular photo. Will have to have a look at the large image, there are times when a big printer is useful

, that would look good on a piece of paper that's 42" wide!

Tazio · 14-02-2014 2:01pm

Irish Steve wrote: »

What stands out very noticeably on that picture is the low within the low that's forming in the south west corner of the core, which might well explain some of the more vicious gusts that went through the south west, as by the look of it, that extra twist in the centre is somewhere over Clare/Limerick area. Spectacular photo. Will have to have a look at the large image, there are times when a big printer is useful , that would look good on a piece of paper that's 42" wide!

http://carlowweather.com/storm12th.jpg

I put this on an overhead projector this morning waiting for a meeting and saw a face over Cork... have a look...

RobertKK · 14-02-2014 10:23pm

Parts of Kilkenny still without electricity, one of my supplies -pumps water - still no power. But the line my house is on was only gone for less than an hour.

Noticed around that some trees just snapped in half, others just toppled over. The worst storm I can remember for trees in general, don't remember as many trees down in 1997.

The Great Storm of Wednesday 12/02/2014

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