Storm Barra - December 7th/8th 2021

The wind was easing alright a while ago but is ramping up again with showers now.

The wind is howling up the road here in Aughrim.

strongest gusts of the day! Tullaroan Kilkenny! less sustained but the gusts are intense

100% this

Does every yellow wind warning you experience have a yellow centre with an orange layer and a spicy red outer coating?

No, it doesn't. Use your head, would you? Authorities reluctant to call complete orange or complete red? How do they win? They can't. Schools in Lucan closed, schools in Celbridge open. Car squashed by tree outside Celbridge school.

Eyrecourt in Galway orange, North Offaly yellow. Yet it's wild as f*CK here.

Use your head.

Since there has been a fair amount of chat about school closings, I would say that the problem is inevitable if county by county basis of warnings is the criterion because the weather forecasters will set a level that they think is going to verify somewhere in the county (where people live) and once they have done that, any sort of regional differences are really out of their control since the system is not broken down into smaller subdivisions. One solution to that might be to divide most counties into several parts based on climatology, then the school authorities in those areas would have their guidance on a more local basis. The other possible solution is to accept a certain number of closings and plan ahead for learning modules that students could take home the previous day or access on the internet the same day, for all I would know this might already be in place. I realize it's a difficult situation for parents whose own daily jobs might not get cancelled along with the schools. And while not professionally employed as a forecaster, I've done enough of this to realize that meteorologists really don't want to be social policemen any more than anyone else does. But the alternative to this system is probably no system where people get into risky situations, or call in the parents halfway through the storm which is a worse than useless approach since by definition that will expose more people to risk.

I'm sure there will be changes made eventually towards a finer grid of warnings, some of your counties are quite large and have considerable differences in weather. This is not a mystery to forecasters at all, but they are given a system to feed and have no direct say in it anyway. I imagine it's a political decision as to what forms the foundation of the warning system. At the very least, Cork could be divided into perhaps three regions, and Galway also. Some other counties could use two regions, and some smaller ones could stay as one unit. That might help although it might also become more chaotic or confusing. There's always going to be boundaries between where warnings are needed and not needed. Sometimes it is two sides of a street, and nobody can get that precise in offering weather forecasts or warnings.

What we try to do in the weather forum is to encourage people to fine tune all forecasts to their local conditions, through their own experience. Once you've established what the large-scale factors are likely to be, then your local exposure is quite important to the outcome, especially for wind speeds. Some places are often sheltered from strong winds from certain directions. But with the warning system you have to keep in mind also what you are trying to avoid is travel, not just to get people to stay home but more importantly to avoid travel because travel inevitably means exposure to different levels of risk. Your home may be in a safe spot and the school may be in a safe spot too, but how about the road between them? That sort of thing applied to thousands of people in different locations is part of the reason for county-wide warnings. And the philosophy is probably skewed towards saving one life or preventing one injury. This is of course the same problem we're all having around the world with the COVID protocols, at what point is the social response worse than the risk of the illness? This is always a balancing of different interests and I would agree it has not always been done in the best possible way. You can err on both sides of any safety question. Some will always say well if you save one life etc, problem being that life is a bit more complex and you can't quantify the total results of any intervention. For example people say things like "Ophelia had those red warnings and only x number of people died" but obviously that is almost answering its own objection, how many people would have died without any warnings? Nobody knows, except that you can compare results to long past events where warnings were not issued. From that sort of analysis, modern tornado warnings in the USA are found to be about 90% effective in terms of reducing death tolls. Similar tornado outbreaks before warnings were available tended to kill ten times as many people per target area of tornadoes of similar strength. The same thing has been shown for hurricane warnings. But at the same time, building standards improve, so part of the reduced death toll can be ascribed to that factor rather than the warnings.

Lights flickering here in carrick on Shannon I've flasks filled and candles at the ready

Wild here in West Galway. There was a few gusts there around 8:30 which seemed more powerful than before - will be interesting to see the Mace Head reading for 8-9pm

Hey sryanbruen, all my BINGO cards are full, where do I claim my prize?

There is no wind warning for Derry or Tyrone.

Still wild here in Limerick, Barra's been at it all day. Our strongest gusts seemed to be between 5 to 7pm but still some strong gusts blowing around at times. Wouldn't surprise me if some roads are impassable from fallen trees and debris.