Jon Mitchell wrote:
>
> On this side of the ocean, I can vaguely remember one very windy night
> in October 1987. I imagine this is not a patch on what you guys get
> fairly regularly. Still, this caused fairly widespread devastation -
> probably because we weren't prepared or used to it.
-------------------------------------------------------
I remember that event quite well since I made a visit to Winchester and
surrounding area shortly afterward. What I remember most is severe
damage to lots of very old, very large and (previously) very majestic
trees. They were weak from age and got severly "pruned". I
particularly remember a valley north of Winchester where the wind had
blown up and outward from the floor of the valley and blew the trees
down in a radial pattern. The base of all the trunks were pointing
toward a center point in the valley.
My recollection of this it that the actual wind event was the "remnants"
of a hurricane whose name I can't recall. Hurricanes typically run a
westerly course first and then start a large sweeping turn until they're
heading north east. If they start their turn while they're still in the
Atlantic they may very well end up in or near the UK. But for most of
them there's nothing left by the time they get there. This one,
however, still had 100 mph winds.
The UK co-workers I was visiting told me that the French weather service
had warned the UK weather service that this wind storm was approaching
but that the UK service thought they were just some daft Frenchmen and
paid it little attention.
100 mph winds make for a weak Category 2 storm. 100 mph actually makes
for a fairly mild hurricane. The kicker is that wind energy is highly
non-linear. 120 mph winds are much, much stronger than 100 mph winds.
Chuck Norcutt
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