From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Eunice is on the way –stay safe:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60417263
There is no doubt according to the forecasts that Storm Eunice will be one of the strongest storms in recent years. The Bristol Channel area will be particularly affected.
In true BBC fashion, however, they have hyped it up into something it is not, or at least hopefully won’t be:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60417263
So let’s get this absolutely straight now, the Burns Day storm was much, much worse:
Bear in mind these are knots, not mph – 1kt = 1.15 mph. Wind gusts of over 80kts plus (92 mph) were widespread inland and away from highly exposed coastal sites. Top speed was 107 mph at Aberporth. Avonmouth clocked 97 mph while Sheerness across in Kent went higher at 101 mph.
The latest Met Office forecast suggest winds of 80 to 90 mph along the Bristol Channel. There is nothing to suggest anything much above 90 mph. except at the top of a high, exposed cliff top.
Further north, winds of 70kts and over (80 mph) were widespread in 1990. Here in Sheffield we are expecting maximum winds of 60 mph tomorrow:
Sadly I have no doubt that the BBC/Met Office will cherry pick a few cliff top and high level sites to claim 100 mph winds. Shame on them if they do, for making political propaganda out of a human tragedy.
Storm Dudley
While we’re at it, let’s take a look back at Storm Dudley, which I seem to recall had forecasts of over 100 mph winds.
In reality, it turned out to be just a typical winter storm. As usual the Met Office use unsuitable and unrepresentative sites for top gusts. Capel Curig is half way up a mountain in Snowdonia. Emley Moor, which I often cycle up, is about 800 ft up where the ITV TV mast is, and so on.
One of the saddest things about the Met Office’s determination to give every storm that passes our way a silly name is that it detracts from the really memorable events.
In twenty years time, who will remember Eunice? It will just be another in a long line of run of the mill storms. By contrast, the Burns Day storm or the Great Storm of 1987 will rightly be remembered for many years to come, precisely because they were extraordinary and were rightly named as such at the time.
It’s exciting and makes news. What else is there for them?
Competence.
Hopefully Punyce passes with little damage except to Offshore Wind
Tell the truth.
More problems for the UK power grid
Grain Power Station near Rochester has lost one of its three chimneys, no one injured, considerable damage and the power station has been temporarily taken offline.
Since the Michael Fish fiasco it has been noticeable that the Met Office (and thus the BBC) always overestimate the severity of expected weather events. Down here in Devon I am hoping they have done the same for Eunice. Only time will tell.
It is Nearly 8AM on Friday. Here 200 yards from the coast of South West England in Devon it is very breezy but does not as yet warrant being called a storm. Local schools are closed.
I am anxiously eyeing my fence in the gusts. The worst is supposed to reach us over the next four hours so lets see if the fence is still standing as that will be a good test of the ferocity of the winds.
Storm Dudley a couple of days ago didn’t stop us getting out and about, it was breezy but nothing out of the ordinary for winter on the south coast.
I’m in Bude on the North Coast of Cornwall, the region receiving the strongest winds, and I can say that it’s pretty blowy, but absolutely nothing like the Great Storm of 1987, which I also experienced in East Kent.
The gusts have really ramped up in the last hour and the fence is swaying badly. Its not supposed to ease down for another 3 or 4 hours so lets see if i still have a fence by then
tonyb
Its now 10. Can’t bear to break off work and take my coffee in our sun room which overlooks the fence which is swaying more than a hula hula dancers grass skirt.
Hi tony
ironically enough I am reading a book about the Galveston Hurricane and it mentions the Great Storm of 1703 in UK. I had never heard of it before. I was going to ask you if you had heard of it next time you were at Climate etc. And then this storm hit. This event is sure to be proof positive for some that it is caused by AGW, yet they can’t say it’s unprecedented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_storm_of_1703
Yes the 1703 storm was notorious. It was also thought to be the first storm that was examined in a scientific manner. In that year no less a person than ‘Daniel Defoe’ author of Gullivers travels advertised widely for peoples experiences and subsequently published a treatise on the subject.
The Great Storm of 1703 – Southam Heritage Collection
Probably not our worst storm-some of these are mentioned in Hubert Lambs book ‘Great storms’.
tonyb
Cereso
Forgot to mention I have a book called ‘The elements rage’ by Frank Lane which goes into many extreme historic weather events including the one at Galveston
tonyb
I have vague memories of him as a singer!
Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe; Gulliver’s Travels was written by Jonathan Swift.
yes quite right, i had both links open but was concentrating on Dean swift.
Sounds like a typical winter storm on the south coast-of Oregon.
Strong winds?
Good thing the UK has gone Green and has lots of wind farms to take advantage of all that free power… wait… what? Wind Turbines don’t work in those speeds?
Opps.
They get blown over instead.
Oh now don’t let yourself be despondent, it’s just a minor little detail, & of course doesn’t highlight the inefficiency & inadequacy of wind power!!! HAGWE!!!
Working just fine now – 35% of demand.
and seriously, you don’t think its a problem when wind speeds hit 90mph plus?
Why don’t you go and get a life, griff? You learn nothing and repeat cobblers here.
You are far too polite Sir, & is testament to your good manners as a gentleman!!! I would not have been quite so courteous to dear Griff, who is technically illiterate & explaining things to him simply confuse the poor soul!!!
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
Take a look. This is not a fit for purpose technology. Intermittency in action.
I usually use the “.org.uk” version of Gridwatch, I hadn’t seen that site before.
Using my “advanced hacking skills” — i.e. right-click then “View Page Source …” — on your link I wanted to see if my numbers were at least in the right ball-park when compared to (one of ?) your preferred data source(s).
It appears that Gridwatch(.co.uk) don’t include the “Embedded Wind” numbers I add in from the National Grid / ESO website (along with inter-connector flows), so having their “daily average” numbers come in below my “daily minimum” ones (e.g. the peaks in February and March 2021) is a bit disconcerting …
… but looking at the overall shape of the curves, however, it looks like I’m not that far off from “reality” …
I just cited that one because its available in easy to view graphic form for quite a few time periods. Yes, I usually prefer the other and original one:
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
But it makes no real difference which source you use, the obvious fact emerges from any display of wind power generation in the UK is that no-one in their right minds would choose a technology which delivered a product with this much unpredictable variability built in to it, if their requirement was to power a constant demand grid.
Its simply not fit for purpose. And we are seeing how unfit it is when we are finding out, as we have recently been finding out, what sort of social and economic changes are going to be required and imposed to live with it.
It reminds me a bit of the defiance of reason and experience that prompted Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Like the backyard steel furnaces, this is never going to work.
I completely agree, but have found that using words alone isn’t so “obvious” to most people (including myself, not just griff et al !).
Just writing “It’s never going to work !” doesn’t work.
Even using concrete numbers on their own doesn’t work.
It takes the “displaying” of images / graphics (without having to expend the time and energy required to click on a link to see them …) for the “obviousness” of the situation, i.e. just how unrealistic the claims being made really are, to be fully appreciated.
Yes, you’re right. Unfortunately.
Any source of electrical power like Wind whose output doubles or halves within an hour will simply destabilize the grid.
What is the difference between “weather” and “climate” ?
The graph below is for the GB (England + Scotland + Wales only) electricity grid from 1/1/2021 to 14/2/2022.
Extract from my spreadsheet for the “notch” in the middle of last December :
Date .. Wind (GWh) .. Min (GW) .. Max (GW) .. Min (%) .. Max (%)
12/12/21 .. 270.493 .. 7.188 … 15.423 .. 21.9% .. 53.5%
13/12/21 .. 223.237 .. 5.360 … 14.799 .. 16.8% .. 53.0%
14/12/21 .. 245.892 .. 5.385 … 13.332 .. 19.0% .. 44.4%
15/12/21 .. 241.021 .. 4.416 … 12.874 .. 15.1% .. 46.2%
16/12/21 .. 76.581 … 2.387 … 4.140 … 6.8% … 14.2%
17/12/21 .. 43.956 … 1.120 … 2.798 … 2.8% … 9.5%
18/12/21 .. 50.954 … 1.237 … 2.816 … 4.4% … 10.2%
19/12/21 .. 56.795 … 0.996 … 4.112 … 3.7% … 13.1%
20/12/21 .. 51.408 … 1.386 … 3.566 … 4.1% … 12.6%
21/12/21 .. 39.965 … 1.162 … 3.139 … 3.1% … 10.3%
22/12/21 .. 139.631 .. 3.086 … 7.813 … 10.2% .. 18.2%
23/12/21 .. 186.442 .. 5.548 … 10.367 .. 17.5% .. 30.9%
24/12/21 .. 214.020 .. 6.330 … 12.470 .. 16.7% .. 45.4%
25/12/21 .. 362.406 .. 12.492 .. 16.693 .. 41.8% .. 57.8%
26/12/21 .. 276.473 .. 6.131 … 14.784 .. 21.8% .. 59.3%
…………
12/2/22 … 424.137 .. 15.483 .. 19.268 .. 42.8% .. 63.4%
NB : Total “Installed Wind Capacity”, according to DUKES (ET 6.1) data for GB in Q3 2021 was just over 24 GW, or roughly 578 GWh per day “nameplate”.
“Now”, i.e. Q1 2022, that has probably increased slightly.
The “424 GWh in 48 Settlement Periods (24 hours)” value from 6 days ago is the highest amount generated by “Wind” in the whole spreadsheet.
424 / 578 ~= 73.5% (of “theoretical capacity”).
Griff,
Siemens wind turbines have a specified cut out wind speed of 25 metres per second. I know you’re mathematically challenged so just to be clear that’s 55mph.
On a day like today windy and mild you would hope that wind would be doing better than 30% of demand. But a lot of turbines will be cut out as per their specifications
The highest wind speed clocked inland today was 78mph in Surrey, although true to form the BBC picked a very exposed coastal site (the needles, Isle of Wight) to clock 122mph – a new UK record (surprise, surprise).
On their website the BBC have corrected that to England. Quite right
The strongest gust ever recorded in the UK was 173mph at Cairngorm summit in the Highlands of Scotland in 1986
Also a bit misleading, The Needles on Top of a cliff. The Cairngorms has 5 of the 10 highest peaks in the UK.
Ben Nevis has only had an automatic weather station since 2017, As it rises from sea level at Fort William to the Summit and has 4 of the other 5 highest peaks.
Good catch – I got it from the news around 2ish, so it hadn’t been changed for the broadcast by then. Slightly embarrassing for the Beeb, not knowing one country from another – perhaps they should get together with Liz Truss!
That must explain why my electricity bill has gone up so much. Thanks for the insight Griff!
It takes a major storm to get it up to 35%. That’s pathetic.
didn’t seem to work too great in Saaremaa…not little Britain the place you have never been out of…
the weather channel infects the BBC
The BBC contracts out its weather service (and not to the Met Office)
That’s right, its gone to a New Zealand company. The Met office are only 20 miles away and sometimes I think it would be better if they stuck their heads out of their windows to forecast the weather.
However they have been forecasting this storm for a week. Its very windy and we shall have to wait to see if it is as strong as they forecast
tonyb
Will the last one to leave the UK turn the lights out … oh wait with renewables they will go out themselves.
Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy. Every bureaucratic organisation ends up furthering its leaders’ ends, not the objectives for which the organisation was created. The Met Office gets government funding and increases its size if it hypes up the weather. Stuff the public, they don’t need proper forecasts (well they’re not going to get them while Met Office bosses’ salaries are going up).
I have wondered what happened a few years back, when the Wet Office forecast a disastrous Bank Holiday weekend , & thousands of day-breakers failed to turn up at Bournemouth, costing the town council thousands in lost revenue, when it turned out to be one of the loveliest weekends on record. Then again, I recall one early November as a school governor & Parent-Teacher rep, organising the Guy Fawkes bonfire night, we were warned of an impending high wind storm to hit the South-West, we spent hours ringing around local radio stations including the local BBC station, warning people not to venture out & try to attend the display as it had been cancelled, it turned out to have been one of the best nights for a display we’d ever had, but cancelled to a reliable Wet Office forecast, supposedly!!! :-((
Capel Curig is situated in a gap between mountains so that wind gets funnelled through and is often recorded at a much higher speed than that of the average rate of flow.
I wiuld have thought after Dudley the next one would shirley be Moore. 😉
I am serious, and don’t call me surely. Roger that?
Roger, Roger.
The name is Bond, James Bond.
If you’ve never seen the movie The Loved One a black comedy with Dudley Moore check it out. It has an all star cast with Jonathan Winters as the Great Reverend, Liberace as the salesman for burial products, Rod Steiger as the mortician. Very funny!!
My pet theory is that after Michael Fish’s “There’s no hurricane”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fish
The MO over hyped every strong breeze so as not to be caught out again. Very few storms since have been as bad as the forecast.
During the intervening years the Climate emergency has arrived and the over stating of storm strength has got worse.
It’s taking a long time for the Met Office that cries wolf so often to be found out.
If you’d seen the report on the snow in Scotland this lunchtime you might not have held that opinion. The reporter gave the impression of horrendous 2-3m of snowdrifts, bleak dangerous conditions, frequent blizzards and dire warnings not to venture out of your front door. All the while standing in front of a busy road with barely 15cm of snow on the ground. I’m not sure what the conditions were in the rest of Scotland but I’d say it was just like most winters for the Scots, despite what the idiotic reporter was trying to inflate into some doomsday scenario.
1″ if that in Ayrshire. It recently has been normal winter weather but pre Xmas it was definitely mild and I got some outside work done which is not normal.
“The latest Met Office forecast suggest winds of 80 to 90 mph along the Bristol Channel. “
According to Windy.com @ ~07.00am it got up to 49 mph/ 80 kph near Swansea.
Love this website: Ventusky
Watch the windy bits in (almost) real time
Don’t trust it too much – or as much as you’d trust the Surface Pressure Chart (SPC) issued by Met Office
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/maps-and-charts/surface-pressure/
I’m comparing the Ventusky with the SPC for mid-day today (Fri) and Ventusky is just an animation of what the Met Office ‘predict’
nothing more
The colour-coding Ventusky add to it nicely shows up Met Office exaggeration – or that they are predicting rural wind speeds rather than what most peeps experience in the towns/cities
(Mmmmm, having said that I think I understand the planning process for windmill farms a little better now – esp how they’re sold to gullible, naive and London-centric politicians)
I’m not far from Sheffield right now, Worksop to be precise.
No wind in the town centre, no traffic, no people no nuffink
The Panic has affected everyone, especially the gentle old folks who usually come to this pub for some tea, toast and company. (Like me, making use of the free car parking (until 10) behind the bus station ##
Clear sky though and traffic on the A1 was busy but no more/less than a typical Friday
## Someone was listening me, in the last 5 minutes – ‘the rush has started‘
:-O
I didn’t say I trusted it 😉
I just love the presentation
I used to work in Sheffield many moons ago.
That Ventusky is excellent thanks. Here in Bounemout big aircraft are taking off. Admittedly they only have to get the ground speed up to 60mph!
I wondered why it was so calm in Glasgow. According to the Ventusky website, Glasgow is right in the eye of the storm.
Isn’t the eye of a storm often calm?
TBH, here in Cheshire, it’s a bit “meh”
Well there are certainly more named storms than there used to be. Must be due to “climate change” , right?
We shouldn’t have started giving them names. It just encourages them.
It would be more useful naming farts before they come out 😉
Coupled with a stink force rating of course.
Storm Eunuch.
I didn’t have the balls to say that
That’d be a cutting name.
Far too easy – you’re just aiming for the low-hanging fruit on this one.
AN OPEN LETTER TO BARONESS VERMA
British Undersecretary for Energy and Climate Change, 31Oct2013
By Allan MacRae, B.A.Sc.(Eng.), M.Eng.
[excerpt]
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, Baroness Verma, then you and your colleagues on both sides of the House may have brewed the perfect storm.
You are claiming that global cooling will NOT happen, AND you have crippled your energy systems with excessive reliance on ineffective grid-connected “green energy” schemes.
I suggest that global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner, and Britain will get colder.
I also suggest that the IPCC and the Met Office have NO track record of successful prediction (or “projection”) of global temperature and thus have no scientific credibility.
I suggest that Winter deaths will increase in the UK as cooling progresses.
I suggest that Excess Winter Mortality, the British rate of which is about double the rate in the Scandinavian countries, should provide an estimate of this unfolding tragedy.
The point is we did not get annual storms and runs of storms until 1987…
Then we had 1990 and now they are more frequent, even annual.
this is the 4th severe storm in last 4 months… 70mph out there and I’m well inland. I can assure you it will be memorable.
The weather in the UK has definitely changed since 2000 and I have no trouble accepting that climate change is responsible.
You can keep up the nothing to see here rubbish – but there is…
“70mph out there and I’m well inland”
Pants on fire much?
“I have no trouble accepting that climate change is responsible.”
The psychological term used for this fear of everything is known as Panophobia.
It is a psychological disorder in which a person has a fear of everything despite there being nothing to fear.
You might want to seek professional help.
Not to be confused with Pantophobia, which is a fear of pants.
I am four miles from Fairford RAF base. We are in what is currently showing as one of the windiest inland areas. The wind is currently 43-56mph. I disbelieve anywhere inland is seeing 70mph. Actual evidence to the contrary will be very welcome though.
The Grifter is a useful idiot for the Alarmist™ mob, an habitual liar, evidence is evil right wing propaganda.
who do I trust, or my own memory of winter storms back in the 1950s, looking at trees blown down.
Or Griffs absurd assertion that there were no storms before 1987,
Poor griff.
The reaction to this storm is ridiculous. Schools are shut as a precaution.
It is quite windy. Many a fence will go down. Old trees will tumble. Garden furniture will go-a-hopping if it’s not looked after.
But this is not that special.
Of more import is the slow repairs to the power lines by the privatised industry after every breezy day.
My family in Mid-Wales had bad weather in this storm, lots of trees down and the rivers flooding.
This video shows a truck being blown over.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-60419268
The local railway line was badly disrupted.
13495419.jpg
13495420.jpg
“The point is we did not get annual storms and runs of storms until 1987…”. This is the most absurd statement that I have ever heard from you, Griff. I remember runs of storms like this back in the 1960s. Nobody said anything much about it at the time because it was just regarded as normal Scottish weather.
January 1968 storm, It was described as Central Scotland’s worst natural disaster since records began and the worst gale in the United Kingdom.[ 20 people died and nearly 1000 homeless.
From the web:
The British Railways car ferry ‘Princess Victoria’ sailing in the Irish Sea from Stranraer (SW Scotland) to Larne (Northern Ireland) foundered in the early afternoon of the 31st January, 1953, with a loss of 132 lives (out of total sailing 174). All the women and children aboard were killed as their lifeboat was overturned as it was being launched away from the stricken ferry. The SEVERE GALE that the vessel encountered was produced by the same intense DEPRESSION that caused the disaster along North Sea coastal regions (see below). Several smaller ships were also sunk off the NW British/Irish coasts.
I must have been asleep that hour for the first 3 storms and this one so far has been just a windy day…
Perhaps you should read some science…
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/understanding-climate/uk-and-global-extreme-events-wind-storms
“The UK State of the Climate report states that there are no compelling trends in storminess when considering maximum gust speeds over the last four decades. More comprehensive studies across the North Atlantic region have reached similar conclusions.”
“For example, the all-time record number of storms over the British Isles in winter 2013/14 couldn’t be linked to human-induced warming.“
The storms didn’t start in the 80s, we just started keeping better records, more monitoring & measurements, media could easily get cameras on the ground, builders changing materials & some use cheaper quality, more hard surfaces (less absorption, faster runoff), and we started getting more sensitive (you call that a storm?). They’ve started recording & naming storms before they do damage (even if they are a non-event). Prior to modern meteorology, we only named & recorded a storm after it had done enough damage for people to notice & be bothered to record.
If a storm affected an old 100ha estate, not many cared. If a storm affects 100ha of medium density housing today, thousands are affected & millions hear about it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_in_the_British_Isles
“The weather in the UK has definitely changed since 2000 and I have no trouble accepting that climate change is responsible.
You can keep up the nothing to see here rubbish – but there is…”
The only thing I see is an unsubstantiated assertion by you.
Unsubstantiated assertions are not evidence of anything. Well, they might be evidence of cluelessness.
“The point is we did not get annual storms and runs of storms until 1987…”
Drivel. Could not be further from the truth.
There were plenty of storms before 1987 and you can even find some of the more extreme ones listed on the UK Met Office site.
Clear Mr Griff has selective amnesia – forgets the inconvenient truths of history.
“The weather in the UK has definitely changed since 2000”
…only if you can’t be bothered to examine the real history of weather in the UK, going back waaay before 2000.
The rubbish here comes with a belief that “climate change is responsible” and then bending every fact to fit that narrative. Climate delusion.
Like the storm that hit Normandy days after D-Day
That tore up lots equipment
Never happened right ?
And the Spanish Armada was dispersed by ?
griff’s world..
News just in….
we have a rotten old tree that has fallen into the road just outside of Cheltenham, according to an expert “this will cause untold difficulties for local traffic and may take up to an hour before things return to normal”, adding “if we don’t all adopt communism in the next 2 years, this sort of thing will just keep happening.”
In Oregon we would just pull out a chain saw and cut it up on the spot and be on our way
Classic Griff,
best laugh I’ve had all day, keep them coming! you haven’t got a clue. I think I can remember a few storms in my time some in whiteout on Scottish Mountains, I’m still here at age 72, still enjoying life. Get a grip Griff
“climate change is responsible”
Even if there is SOME weather change over that period- you have no proof it’s MOSTLY due to human causes- and THAT’s the issue- not that weather has changed over a fairly short period of time.
There is no reason you should believe me when I say I read what you write before reflexively dumping on it, yet I do read it. But claims like “we did not get annual storms and runs of storms until 1987” incline me to stop reading you at all.
You have two paths back now. Be a lot more serious or be a lot more funny.
Griff, mate
Even for you, that’s a ridiculous, data-free statement
The Grote Mandrenke killed 25,000 people in 1362
Gale of January 1976 was described as worst since 1953. The destruction covered a wider area of the United Kingdom than the Great Storm of 1987, with 1.5 million incidents of damage reported. The Jan 1976 incident was further described as being comparable with the storms on 31/01/1953, 16/02/1962, 21/02/1967 and 13/11/1972.
Speaking as someone born in the Reign of George VI I.can say the UK weather hasn’t changed a great deal.
You haven’t lived long enough Griff
That’s one of the reasons Al liar Gore told young people in his multi-million dollar brainwashing sessions, not to listen to old people. He like all the other mass-murdering Socialists (they never ever pulled the trigger themselves of course) knew he had to brainwash the youth so as to weaponize them against their parents, classic tactics, unethical & unprincipled!!! I hope he suffers from terrible haemorrhoids so he can no longer talk out of his pained area!!!
“ The point is we did not get annual storms and runs of storms until 1987 ”
You were then too young… you cannot remember the “Invencible Armada”…
I believe that it was the “British” weather, more than the efforts of the English fleet, that broke the Spanish Armada, & a few merciless Irishmen who slaughtered many a survivor of said Armada!!!
You may be right… Most often a complex process has many contributing causes…
Well, the English fleet did convince them to take the long way home, around Scotland, rather than tangling with them again on the shorter route.
You have to explain what the connexion is. There are runs of storms in the UK, always have been, the country is after all right on the edge of a very large ocean, and its weather is heavily influenced by the Jet Stream, which varies unpredictably. At the moment its curved south and then north. Happens from time to time (on a scale of decades). When it does, you get a cluster of storms blowing in off the Atlantic. Their severity is unpredictable, and varies a lot.
What you would have to show is not simply that since 2000 there have been more storms of greater severity. There will be fluctuations of that nature.
You would also have to show some causal relationship to the amount of warming that has occurred since then
There isn’t any scientific evidence that the amount of warming since 2000 will have influenced the Jet Stream’s path or intensity in any way.
Looked at over a period of centuries the UK has a temperate climate with a long tailed distribution of relatively extreme weather events. The present couple of storms are in that pattern. They are no more attributable to what little global warming has occurred on an average level across the globe than is an unusually cold winter or an unusually hot or dry summer.
The idea that the climate alarmists always keep implicitly assuming is that the norm for country A, in this case the UK, is stability and uniformity of weather over a period of decades. It simply is not, never has been, and never will be as long as the UK is on the edge of a huge ocean subject to its own oscillations, and right under the varying path of a Jet Stream, which also oscillates.
Griff says he has no trouble accepting that climate change is responsible. The issue is not what you can accept, its what the evidence shows, and it doesn’t show what he accepts.
Covid wasn’t caused by global warming either….
With all the strong winds and all those bird choppers the UK is slowly moving back to be part of Europe crashing into France soon 🙂
Look here, numbskull, I know of nobody who is sceptical of global warming, or climate change, it is merely the attribution that is highly questionable. Perhaps you can step in where a couple of so called climate scientists were supposed to provide evidence of a period or periods when the Earth’s climate stayed the same & never changed??? I’ve been waiting for two years without reply!!!
The point is we did not get annual storms and runs of storms until 1987…
Griff is lying, as usual. Even the Met Office does not believe there is link between Climate Change and the frequency and intensity of storms in the UK. Quote: “There is little evidence Climate Change is affecting UK storms.”
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/understanding-climate/uk-and-global-extreme-events-wind-storms
Not lying… just absent-minded.
Yup – as in his mind is completely absent!
Griff, mate
This is what the met office has to say:
How about an acknowledgement you are wrong?
Few weeks ago there were complaints of wind draught, now we get a wind of a wrong kind. There is no pleasing these people.
A bit windy here in SW London, not exceptional yet, but red warning has been ‘slammed’ on the SE England.
Hope not as bad as October 87 which blew off my conservatory roof, and half of someone’s pine tree fond refuge in my back garden. So far so good.
typo ‘drought’
Up to date wind gusts (estimates?, forecasts?) for the red alert areas
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=52.00;-0.51;6&l=gust
anyone would like to elaborate ?
9.30 am here in the UK’s rural West Midlands. The wind is so slight the pampas grass is gently swaying. The trees are just about showing movement in their crowns, a non event sort of day.
If this turns out to be a memorable storm then people must have very short memories, or limited experience.
I will report back in 12 hours.
Pampas grass, a native to South America, has no business growing at these latitudes. Must be climate change!
Must be climate change there are no places in South America as cold or as lofty as the West Midlands UK.
The hedgehogs like the nesting cover created by the massive ground tangle, these plants evolve.
Coming up to 11.00 am here and the pampas has stopped swaying. It is now just a bit wet from a squall. wind is just normal with an occasional gust, it’s driving the wind vane to show a south westerly is blowing. How unusual is that in a UK winter eh? .
I thought pampas was for swinging not swaying.
The Oregon coast has Pampas grass by the ton. We also have buddelea -butterfly bush. The state is determined to eradicate both. but not reduce fire danger by cleaning up the forest-so every fire is large and can be blamed on-“Climate Change.”
I have a Buddleiea in my back garden in Lincoln (UK).
Ah no – it’s actually used in UK suburban areas as a ‘secret’ signal that the owners of the house ‘wife-swap’ or are swingers. It’s rather fallen out of favour in recent years.
It is now coming up to 9.30 pm. The storm Eunice has blown through. For those in the south, well they have had a few trees blown over. The tent covering the O2 arena in London lost a bit of fabric and all the train drivers took the day off because it was windier today than an average day.
Here in the West Midlands, the pampas grass has had four seed heads broken off, other than that, it has been a completely unspectacular event.
Maybe the next one will turn out to be significant. On the plus side, the highest wind speed record was broken today with a blow of 122mph at the Needles on the Isle of Wight.
In this area, the great storm of ’87 will always mean 1287.
Update from the Guardian:
Now that’s windy. But not very windy for those locations.
If you’ve never heard of St Mary’s Airport you can’t get more Southwest in the British isles.
Speaking of wind, 58 billion dollars has been wiped off the value of three of Europe’s largest wind turbine companies in the last year.
This has happened before. Renewable Energy is the 21st-Century version of the South Sea Bubble in the 1700’s or the Dutch Tulip Mania in the 1600’s.
Griff is stupid enough to invest his entire life savings in Renewables.
Yes, it looks like the jet stream is taking aim at the UK:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-16.05,37.54,264/loc=-2.716,53.712
Griff thinks this has never happened before.
I contest that griff cannot think.
I suspect he can, but he just doesn’t like to admit it…..
From the article: “One of the saddest things about the Met Office’s determination to give every storm that passes our way a silly name is that it detracts from the really memorable events.
In twenty years time, who will remember Eunice? It will just be another in a long line of run of the mill storms. By contrast, the Burns Day storm or the Great Storm of 1987 will rightly be remembered for many years to come, precisely because they were extraordinary and were rightly named as such at the time.”
Naming thunderstorms is just more climate change propaganda. It’s another attempt to maniuplate the language to promote the fake CO2 crisis.
Thankfully, my local weather forecasters don’t give names to thunderstorms.
Another memorable thing about October 87 storm is that on the same night/next day (Thursday/Friday, 15/16 October) first the New York then London ‘ sudden, severe, and unexpected’ stock markets crash happened.
Yet…
The storm of 1703 was quite remarkable. It occurred during the Edenic Days before the Horror of Global Warming!
https://www.fairfordhistory.org.uk/the-great-storm-1703/
Nothing ever happened before 1987 according to one contributor here….
Yes. Giving names to natural forces is a manifestation of magical, superstitious, pre-scientific behavior; next step is to call them gods and make images thereoff. Then sacrificing animals (and humans) to appease them. Then…
We live in GB – we have something called Winter, we get storms, we get rain, we get wet…. And we used to just get on with it.
now we just scurry under the table like a bunch of timid mice, completely controlled by the press …. Who just love to over hype absolutely everything that happens in this world. We have got to get this back under control before the whole country starts to become a bunch of mentally unstable zombies!!! It damages the economy, peoples livelihoods destroyed, and our ability to cope with difficulties compromised….
“As usual the Met Office use unsuitable and unrepresentative sites sites for top gusts.”
If they do usually use the same “unsuitable and unrepresentative sites”, then the comparisons are apt, are they not?
Eunice has just hit here and the winds are starting to pick up, and in the next hour or so the radar says winds are going to more than double in gust speed.
I remember the Great Storm of 1987 when Michael Fish famously said words to the effect of “don’t worry, there’s not going to be any hurricane”. I didn’t live where it hit hardest but I recall it doing significant damage all around the country. The Met Office had predicted that the storm was going to veer off northwards, but it didn’t and went straight up the English Channel and slammed the south of the country. Oops!.
I was working night shift that night in Oxford, about 2am we had to stop walking between the buildings or get blown over but production was not hindered. However the dayshift had major issues getting into work and a lot of us stayed for a couple of hours to keep the lines moving. Then we left to try to get home and getting through the road closures was difficult. Visited Kew Gardens a few months later and the Treetop walk was unrecognisable from our previous visits.
The peak seems to have passed in this part of the south coast (Dorset), but it was barely possible to walk against the wind at around 10.00
Comparing the list of maximum hourly speeds and gusts with the Burns Day storm,
Bournemouth (Hurn) airport recorded the following
1990 Burns Day
Max gust 83 mph, max hourly wind 53 mph
2022 Eunice
max gust 76 mph, max hourly wind 45 mph
Distinctly and memorably windy but not a record breaker
Let’s look at the distribution of ozone in the stratosphere in the northern hemisphere. It shows the polar vortex pattern. Where the ozone is arranged latitudinally the polar vortex and the jet stream current is stronger. You can now see a strong westerly circulation in the Atlantic.
This circulation in the Atlantic will continue over the next few days. It will be different in the Pacific, where the polar vortex will be blocked and the jetstream will drop south over North America.
It’s a good thing the climate alarmist industrial complex was not invented until after WW2. Otherwise D-Day might not have happened out of an abundance of caution for wind plus carbon emissions and the UK would have gone on to become a moonscape of V2 rocket craters.
You can see the significant temperature difference over the UK, and it’s already snowing in Scotland.
The low is pulling cold air from the north over the UK, which promises more snowfall.
Well, they’ve done it. My TV is showing 122mph at the Needles, a new all-time record. How much trust to put in it, I do not know.
With such a temperature difference, it must be blowing hard.
That seems scarcely believable.
From the Bournemouth seafront, you can see the Needles a few miles away. Bournemouth has had no noticeable damage. Only the odd small branch in the streets, and no damage at all either from wind or waves on the seafront, despite the strongest winds coinciding with a high spring tide.
I wonder if the anemometer at the Needles is inside a channel which funnels the wind through it in some way, such as you sometimes get between tall buildings
Is the anemometer not on the lighthouse?
The wind speed for the Needles is measured by an anemometer sat on top of a building, sat on top of a cliff on the western point of the island.
It invariably measures the highest wind speeds for the south of England for obvious reasons and bears little relevance to the rest of the country, even to the other side of the island.
As you rightly point out, wind speeds in the general area were not comparable.
Of course you’ll never see that explained in a tabloid headline…WINDIEST EVAH!!
Daniel Schmidt, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Thanks for that information. Yes, it does look like a standard exposure. I know they often get the highest gust along the south coast in stormy weather, even compared with other coastal promontories, such as Portland Bill.
Nevertheless, I’m still amazed that a few miles from the airport at Bournemouth, 5 miles from the coast, max gust 76 mph, there could be such an extraordinary gust. I was down on the seafront at the time, and the Needles were clearly visible in bright sunshine. I must have seen it happen – what excitement!!
Getting back to this a few days later…..!!
I was intrigued to read in yesterday’s Times on-line, another slightly disbelieving article about the 122 mph at the Needles. It pointed out a few anomalies.
It was higher than the highest gust in the Great Storm of 1987 (115 mph), and also the Burns Day Storm of 1990 (104 mph), both of which resulted in considerably more damage – for example, an estimated 15 million trees were felled in 1987, compared with about one million this time around.
Also, other gusts at similarly exposed locations nearby didn’t even reach 100 mph, and more typically were around 90 mph.
I haven’t been able to find a copy of the anemometer trace for the day in question, but I did notice that, as the storm was building up that morning, there were occasional gusts in the 90s at the Needles, followed by one of something over 100, and then the 122.
The Times article suggests that the shape of the cliffs below the anemometer could possibly be responsible for a very localised acceleration in the wind speed, caused by a type of Venturi effect, but this would be dependent on the exact direction of the wind during the strongest gusts.
Perhaps we shall never know. After all, this is just speculation. But, who knows, maybe the Met Office will put some effort into having a closer look at “England’s strongest wind”??
Probably a bit late for most of the press, who have already moved on from their headlines stating “122 mph winds batter Britain”, as though such winds swept the whole country all day
Only a record for England not he UK.
The strongest gust ever recorded in the UK was 173mph at Cairngorm summit in the Highlands of Scotland in 1986
“The strongest gust ever recorded in the UK was 173mph”
That’s impressive!
Griff would faint dead away if that happened today. He would swear it was the work of the evil CO2.
The low has swept over the UK and is now over the North Sea. Snowfall in Denmark and strong wind on the continent, will intensify overnight.
Strong zonal circulation with an admixture of Arctic air in the UK for the next few days.
I’ve been out walking in both Dudley and Eunice, and neither was particularly special:
http://www.honestcommonsense.co.uk/2022/02/storm-dudley-was-dud-was-storm-eunice.html
Climate blame communications has become boilerplate language.
Brazil’s deadly mudslides reflect neglect, climate change – ABC News (go.com)
Dangerous squall line enters Poland from Germany. It can break trees and tear off roofs. During the night over the Baltic Sea there will be a center of low pressure below 970 hPa.
It has been comical to watch MSM and the green blob hysterically obsess about this normal average storm – the human species is doomed
Meanwhile, winter is in full swing in North America.
I smell spring in the air here in the central U.S. We’re going to get a few more cold blasts that last a couple of days but the warmups are coming quicker, some of the wild flowers are blooming and the birds are back.
it looks like the eastern third of the U.S. is going to suffer the brunt of arctic air.
We are now past the coldest part of the year, heading towards spring. I need to order some garden seeds. 🙂
Actually, the saddest thing about naming storms is, eventually one had to be named Eunice.
The ‘Sun’ newspaper is claiming 122mph winds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1R64mly8y0
Funny how the camera just happened to be there when these men were blown over.
On Wednesday the BBC were forecasting wind gusts of 40mph or more for where I live. All day long the trees hardly moved.
On Thursday they forecast hail showers all morning and until 2pm. We got one very brief hail shower lasting about 5 minutes.
Today they were forecasting heavy snow all morning. We had a wee bit of snow early in the morning and then nothing, By noon the little snow we had had virtually all melted away.
To get it wrong once can be regarded as a misfortune; to get it wrong twice looks like carelessness. I wonder what Oscar Wilde would have made of getting it wrong three times.
perhaps it is time to stop the silly names and number them annually eg 2022 – 1, 2, 3 etc. We need to make sure there is a realistic definition so the climate crazies can’t call a normal storm a big event like this. Numbering would make it much clearer however many storms there were beyond a particular size and should stop the nonsense we get about worst year ever.
That sounds like a good idea to me. The climate change propagandists may not like it, though.
Tonight’s BBC news was all about Eunice. They were desperate to make something of this very minor event. And of course the warmers were invited to drivel on about how this was going to get worse. TV news is becoming less and less watchable.
One of these days all of this climate change insanity will be seen for what it is.
A front from the south brings snow to the UK.
This is what Griff said on February 18, 2022 1:18 am:
This is what the Met Office says:
Its one thing to disagree. This is something quite different, this is intellectual dishonesty. Anyone can find the Met Office views very easily. They have declined to attribute Eunice to Global Warming, and have clearly stated that there are no trends in UK extreme weather events, so there is nothing to explain by citing Global Warming.
Question therefore to Griff. Do you accept the Met Office account? If not, why not? And if you do, do you now agree that the weather in the UK has definitely not changed since 2000, and that there is nothing about it that requires the invocation of climate change or anything else to explain it?
There really is nothing to see here, and even the Met Office, which is thoroughly sold on the climate change hysteria, can see it and admit it publicly.
“Anyone can find the Met Office views very easily.”
I wondered about that myself. Griff seems to be able to find links that he thinks backs up his CAGW claims but can’t seem to find the MET office take on things. Presumably, because the MET office doesn’t go along with Griff’s CO2 fearmongering.
A period of zonal circulation over the North Atlantic causes ocean surface temperatures to drop.
That’s a little confusing to me. Isn’t there always some kind of zonal circulation in the North Atlantic?
I see a high-pressure system (marked) currently circulating over the Atlantic. Is that what you are referring to?
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-34.71,28.44,304/loc=-28.731,37.797
Zonal circulation means western jetstream (latitudinal).
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2022/02/19/2200Z/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=-22.32,52.35,766
Lows move along the jetstream.
Thanks for the correction.
That graphic shows why the UK is getting their strong winds.
Tom, winter in North America is not going to end anytime soon. Look at the circulation.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=namer×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
It looks like a fairly normal winter from my location.
Nullschool shows the coldest temperatures are in central Canada. The cold air coming into the U.S. has been trending toward the eastern part of the nation. I’m located on the western edge of the cold air intrusion, so the temperatures are milder here.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-113.03,63.96,350
In three days, stratospheric intrusion will freeze the US west.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/
A cold surface to the north heralds a high over northwestern Canada.
I would call it storm Satan or storm lucifer, whose with me?
Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
*But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day.
(Henry V, Act 4. Sc. 3)