Storm Eleanor : Tuesday 02nd PM / Weds 03rd Jan 2108

Thestones

Very strong gusts in Dublin at the moment, just waiting on our fence to come down, 3 times in the last 18 months it's happened, we seem to live in a wind tunnel!

Mr.Wemmick

screamer wrote: »

Wind blasting through here in south laois. Can't imagine how bad the west coast must be. On the bright side at least this is a night time storm so much less dangerous for road users etc than a daytime storm
Night all stay safe.

And most kids, teachers, students are still on holiday and are not back on the roads tomorrow. The less traffic and stress on the roads tomorrow morning the better.

Swellan

Neddyusa wrote: »

Yes I see that now - but issued at 19.00, which was AFTER the worst of the winds had passed Connacht and while it was peaking in Cavan/Monaghan.

These counties were not covered by any orange warning BEFORE the storm hit - or were they?

Cavan wasn't included in the earlier orange warning.

monster1

Tree down in my road in Roscommon. Drove to galway just now. The M17 was dodgey, car swaying a lot

Itssoeasy

Is there thunder and lightning associated with this storm because the winds in cork have really picked up. Either I heard a huge rumble of thunder about ten minutes ago or something very big in my garden or neighbouring gardens moved.

igCorcaigh

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Is there thunder and lightning associated with this storm because the winds in cork have really picked up. Either I heard a huge rumble of thunder about ten minutes ago or something very big in my garden or neighbouring gardens moved.

Thunder!

WoolyJumper

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Is there thunder and lightning associated with this storm because the winds in cork have really picked up. Either I heard a huge rumble of thunder about ten minutes ago or something very big in my garden or neighbouring gardens moved.

Thought I heard thunder around then too

Meteorite58

National Weather Warnings

STATUS ORANGE

Wind Warning for Donegal, Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Sligo, Clare, Cork, Kerry and Limerick
Westerly gale to storm winds together with high tides and exceptionally high seas will result in coastal damage and flooding. Damaging gusts likely inland also.

Issued:Tuesday 02 January 2018 22:00
Valid:Tuesday 02 January 2018 22:00 to Wednesday 03 January 2018 14:00


STATUS YELLOW

Wind Warning for Leinster, Cavan, Monaghan, Roscommon, Tipperary and Waterford
Strong and very gusty westerly winds will continue into Wednesday. Further damaging gusts are possible.

Issued:Tuesday 02 January 2018 22:00
Valid:Tuesday 02 January 2018 22:00 to Wednesday 03 January 2018 14:00

Meteorite58

Next High Tide for Galway is 05.37 at 5.5M , higher than tonight's tide with more of a surge coming in.

Limerick Docks 07.17 at 6.40M

Meteorite58

Blowing a stink here near Tralee gusting to around 70 km/h. Squally showers of rain and hail and lightning earlier. 16.6mm of precipitation so far.

No let up for many hours to come.

UrbanFret

Swellan wrote: »

Cavan wasn't included in the earlier orange warning.

Every fire station in Cavan were out dealing with trees down. Was supposed to be no more than a breeze to hear them spoofing earlier.:o

80s Child

Still no power here in Westport and gusts have picked up again.

No real rain to speak of at the minute.

The Quay here is flooded since earlier this evening, with some cars abandoned.

The Westport Louisburgh road was impassable for a time earlier during high tide and has been left with a lot of debris.

Has anyone heard anything about flights to the UK?

Have a family member flying from Knock in the morning, still unsure if said flight will go!

mickmackey1

Violent squall just now - mid Limerick. Thought the windows were coming in :eek:

JCX BXC

Can I ask, is this system not still Storm Eleanor?

Testament1

Got caught out in Galway Docks myself, was only gone from the car about 40 minutes to meet a friend. Came back as the flood was receding, water inside the car up to the pedals. Tis currently overnighting in City Recoverys yard along with many other folks cars. Got quite the surprise when we checked out the news pages and saw just how bad it had been before we got back to the car.

_Dara_

BillyBobBS wrote: »

I'm sorry but aren't these "alerts" getting a bit OTT? Just back from my walk and yes it's windy but nothing out of the ordinary.

It’s probably because your head was stuck up your arse while you were out walking. Muffled the sound.

piuswal

Quote "Gaoth Laidir

Unfortunately we're in the unfortunate position to be first port of call for storms like this, so we have very limited upwind weather reports to work off. A few widely-separated databuoys is all, plus a couple of ASCAT scans a day. No weather balloons, no low-level aircraft reports. As such Met Éireann are at a disadvantage compared to say the UKMO, who have had several hours notice of the change of course and plenty of realtime data to update/tweak their forecasts/warnings.

The main problem, though, is that Eleanor was only in its infancy as it hit the west coast, or so we thought. Had we a denser network of databuoys (we need that) and more frequent satellite overpasses then they could have seen the shift earlier" Quote
=============================================
This is the first time I've come across this most relevant point being made in any thread, and it applies to any and all threads on forecasting for Ireland..

It would be worthwhile for people to have a look at a map encompassing at;
least western Europe, the Atlantic and the eastern seaboard of North America and realise how small the island of Ireland is in relation to the vast ocean area where the bulk of our storms originate, an area of sparse data as Gaoth Laidir has pointed out.

The other challenge, particular to this storm, was both the rapidity of its development and its very rapid movement and the fact that it began to develop so close to the west coast allowing very little time to pinpoint it accurately.

Earlier we have comments as to how big Galway was and that ME should be more refined it its warnings, tonight we have had the opposite view point, warnings should be much broader. When considering warnings just remember Gaoth Laidir's point and the size of Ireland, not any county, relative to the source of our storms.

smallgarden

I learned the most about Irish weather from a talk at Airfield. The meteorologist explained that the majority of our weather comes from the west. Unfortunately the main thing to the west of us is the sea where it is impossible to accurately predict the weather as there are no weather stations in the sea. We only know accurately once it hits us and because we're so small there is little warning. We can only try guess the effects as best we can

Call me Al

It has ratcheted up in Achill again too but no rain.
Nothing in comparison with what hit us around 5.30 but stiff enough. No thunder or lightening here either.
It will probably lull again in a while before starting back up again.

jimbobaloobob

Can hardly hear with the wind here in south conamara
Howling down the chimney.

Renmore, Galway city. Just had a lash of hailstones & wind sustained blowing.

Roger_007

East Meath here.......still waiting for Eleanor.........but shure, (as Albert Reynolds once said), "that's wimmen for ya".

jimbobaloobob

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Renmore, Galway city. Just had a lash of hailstones & wind sustained blowing.

Have many of the street floods receded or is there expectation of them again on the next tide?

piuswal

smallgarden wrote: »

I learned the most about Irish weather from a talk at Airfield. The meteorologist explained that the majority of our weather comes from the west. Unfortunately the main thing to the west of us is the sea where it is impossible to accurately predict the weather as there are no weather stations in the sea. We only know accurately once it hits us and because we're so small there is little warning. We can only try guess the effects as best we can

The above is partly true, re area to west, see previous posts by Gaoth Laidir and myself; the main issue/problem with Eleanor was the fact that it developed so close to the west coast and was moving so rapidly.

Look how well Ophelia was tracked and forecast; because there was plenty of time to accurately pinpoint its location and there were many days of data assimilated into the forecast models.There is no guessing in the present day. The forecasting models are extremely sophisticated but it is the sheer scale of the problem and the variation in and sometimes lack of good data combined with the different compromises that all models have to make to simulate the atmosphere that leads to differences in forecasts from different models. And, as already stated, Eleanor was particularly challenging because of how close it was to the west coast before it really developed and the speed at which it moved giving the models very little chance to a) analyse the situation and then b) forecast its progress. Models take time to get going as it were, spin-up time, I believe its called. There was little or no time with Eleanor. In all the circumstances I believe ME did a very good job.

Nabber

Agreed with the difficulty Ireland has predicting weather. I know we don’t have the have the same resources available as they do in the UK, but surely we could get some more data bouy out in to out NW, W and SW?

Without derailing a thread, but surely our green taxes should be paying towards some of this? I wouldn’t be surprised if we are spending more on “preventing” AGW than we do on predicting the very thing we reckon is changing!

I think MET do a great job given the current situation and Ireland’s geographical location.

Donegal Storm

piuswal wrote: »

Quote "Gaoth Laidir

Unfortunately we're in the unfortunate position to be first port of call for storms like this, so we have very limited upwind weather reports to work off. A few widely-separated databuoys is all, plus a couple of ASCAT scans a day. No weather balloons, no low-level aircraft reports. As such Met Éireann are at a disadvantage compared to say the UKMO, who have had several hours notice of the change of course and plenty of realtime data to update/tweak their forecasts/warnings.

The main problem, though, is that Eleanor was only in its infancy as it hit the west coast, or so we thought. Had we a denser network of databuoys (we need that) and more frequent satellite overpasses then they could have seen the shift earlier" Quote
=============================================
This is the first time I've come across this most relevant point being made in any thread, and it applies to any and all threads on forecasting for Ireland..

It would be worthwhile for people to have a look at a map encompassing at;
least western Europe, the Atlantic and the eastern seaboard of North America and realise how small the island of Ireland is in relation to the vast ocean area where the bulk of our storms originate, an area of sparse data as Gaoth Laidir has pointed out.

The other challenge, particular to this storm, was both the rapidity of its development and its very rapid movement and the fact that it began to develop so close to the west coast allowing very little time to pinpoint it accurately.

Earlier we have comments as to how big Galway was and that ME should be more refined it its warnings, tonight we have had the opposite view point, warnings should be much broader. When considering warnings just remember Gaoth Laidir's point and the size of Ireland, not any county, relative to the source of our storms.

I was one of those commenting on the forecast the other day and to be fair that system was a far simpler system to forecast, the wind field was much broader and it was already developed well before it reached our shores. This system was an entirely different beast with such a turbulent and active situation, nobody with any knowledge of weather forecasting should have any criticisms or negative comments to make and I haven't seen any.

My comment at the time was that warnings should be a lot more dynamic and flexible, this event was unpredictable and subject to sudden changes so a larger warning was entirely acceptable

Rougies

piuswal wrote: »

Models take time to get going as it were, spin-up time, I believe its called. There was little or no time with Eleanor. In all the circumstances I believe ME did a very good job.

The model runs themselves are relatively quick to compute, we see their output in almost real time on various sites. The observation data that is fed into the models as input is the reason for the delay. There are thousands of observations from weather stations/ships/buoys/satellites/planes etc. that need to be gathered and checked for errors before the model run can even start.

Donegal Storm

Rougies wrote: »

The model runs themselves are relatively quick to compute, we see their output in almost real time on various sites. The observation data that is fed into the models as input is the reason for the delay. There are thousands of observations from weather stations/ships/buoys/satellites/planes etc. that need to be gathered and checked for errors before the model run can even start.

We get the runs several hours late though, eg. the 12z ECMWF doesn't become public until after 6pm. I'm not sure how long they actually take to run but I've used CFD models in my own line of work and even the most basic of simulations take an age to run, I can only imagine the computational power needed to a simulation of the entire planet!

As you say though the main issue with the models is the gaps in input data, large swathes of the Atlantic and Arctic are still devoid of basic observations so there's inevitable inaccuracies at input time, we'd need a big increase in buoy and balloon infrastructure if we're to genuinely get a grip of the Atlantic

Recliner

I must have been under a rock for the past 24hrs..I had no idea this was coming. In Sth Tipp, incredibly strong winds, some gusts that I think are as strong as Dylan. Thunder, but I haven't seen lightening. Heavy rain, I'm not sure if it's hailstones as well or just that the rain is pelting off the window so hard. We had strapped everything in the garden down for the last storm. I'm assuming there will be some damage but we'll deal with that tomorrow.
Himself fast asleep and I'm only praying that the dog won't want a trip outside to do her business while this is going on. I'm not liking this one bit.

Oneiric 3

piuswal wrote: »

Earlier we have comments as to how big Galway was and that ME should be more refined it its warnings, tonight we have had the opposite view point, warnings should be much broader. When considering warnings just remember Gaoth Laidir's point and the size of Ireland, not any county, relative to the source of our storms.

I, along with one or two others, were the ones to comment on the warning system in relation to size of country, and it is a view that I at least continue to stand by. A county by county warning system might work in the east, where counties generally are quite small and encompass a small geographical area; however, for counties in the west, which are generally far larger, a one size fits all system is never going to work.

GL indeed makes some very valid points, but we also in an age where satellite images are updated now every 5 to 15 minutes and available to us within 10 minutes after capture. Surely this would compensate somewhat for the lack of data on the ground when considering a forecast when storms are coming in from the west?

I will point out that on the weather on BBC Breakfast TV news yesterday morning, which I was watching before I went to work, that the forecaster pointed that there was an Amber warning in place parts of N. Ireland, (which I understand was issued the night before) for gusts up to 60 to 70 miles an hour from 'Storm Eleanor', which suggests to me that the UK Met Office considered the possibility of the storm talking a more northerly track than what the majority of the main models were showing at the time.