By Paul Homewood
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To the shame of the MSM, the reporting of Strom Eowyn has been disgracefully hysterical, untruthful and misleading.
There have been widespread claims that it was record breaking, once-in-a-generation storm. The Evening Standard even described “hurricane force winds battering the UK”.
The Met Office at least brought a hint of reality, when they said it was the strongest in ten years. But even that does no stand up to scrutiny, as Eunice brought stronger winds three years ago. This was when 122 mph winds were recorded on the Needles. On Friday, the highest gusts were 100 mph. Of course, as we know, the Needles is not a representative site, but the Met Office still think it appropriate to list it as a record for England!
If they really believe Eowyn was more powerful, they should drop the pretence that measurements on the Needles are meaningful. They cannot have it both ways.
But more to the point, Eunice itself was not unusually powerful, as the Met Office State of the Climate Report last year revealed:
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https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/joc.8553
Indeed it is this relative absence of really strong storms lately which makes Eowyn seem “exceptional”.
We all know that those 1980s and 90s storms were at another level – not only the Great Storm of 1987, but also Burns Day in 1991 and the Boxing Day storm in 1998. To call Eowyn “once in a generation” is an insult to all those who suffered back then.
In fact you don’t even have to search to find storms every bit as strong as Eowyn. Eighty years ago to the month, for instance, an “exceptionally severe gale” brought winds of 113 mph to St Ann’s Head in Pembrokeshire, much stronger than anything Eowyn brought to the British Isles.
Winds elsewhere also exceeded Eowyn away from the new breed of cliff and hill top sites, which are now employed by the Met Office to give a false impression.
For example, winds of 88 mph at South Shields in 1945 were above anything in comparable locations this week.
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Image may be NSFW.
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The 1945 storm was the same one which brought record 113 mph winds to Limerick before the instrument pen went off the chart, as related by the Irish Times.
As for that “hurricane” nonsense, there was even one report, in the Mail I believe, which compared the 100 mph winds at Drumalbin with the Saffir Simpson scale, which lists 74 mph winds as Cat 1. The dopey reporter obviously had not understood that the Saffir Simpson scale works on average, sustained wind speeds, not gusts.
I have not found anywhere in the British Isles where sustained winds exceeded 74 mph.
At Armagh in N Ireland, for instance, sustained winds were only 42 mph:
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And at Eskdalemuir, as another example, winds averaged 39 mph during the peak of the storm.
These are both places which were in the thick of the storm. Even coastal sites, such as Prestwick, barely got above 80 mph gusts – certainly not “hurricane strength”.
It is hardly surprising that the younger generation, who have no memory of the really devastating storms of the past, genuinely believe that stroms like Eowyn really are unprecedented and the consequence of climate change. The media has done a good job of brainwashing them!