A fifty year summary of European
windstorms making landfall
Transcript of keynote speech by Donald
Burfitt-Dons continued
Over
the fifty years from 1948 to 1997 there were some 13 windstorms making
landfall in Europe, some qualifying as Cat one cyclones, approximately,
one every three point eight years.
The ones
where there was the greatest loss of life occurred in the 1953 floods
with 2130 in the UK and the Netherlands, and in the 1962 storm again
with extensive flooding costing over 300 lives.
Although
only a best guess a total of at least 2600 people died as a result of
severe wind storms and associated flooding over that half century.
The two
most catastrophic in terms of human life had almost identical core pressures
of 966mbs for the first North Sea flood in 1953 and 965mbs for the second
in 1962.
More recently we had the Great Storm of 15th Oct 87.
With
max mean wind of 70 kts (over 10 mins ) and a recorded gust of 100 knots
this just qualified as a cat one ETC
The highest
gust was actually in Brittany, France where a peak gust 117 knots was
recorded. Core pressure this time was down to 953 mbs, 12 mbs below
the previous storms in 53 and 62.
Our met
office came in for a bit of flak with their tracking forecast but in
fact they weren’t much out.
Two years later they redeemed themselves with a highly accurate forecast
for the storm in Scotland on13 February 1989. With a core pressure even
lower at 951 mbs the associated winds broke the UK land speed record
for winds with a gust of 123 kts.
The recent
history for deeper lows was being established.
By now
ETCs had acquired named status following a German Met Dept initiative.
Continued Donald Burfitt-Dons
updates ETC activity since 1990
the
planet's way of recycling heat energy/
the first Brazilian hurricane/cyclones
outside the tropics/how
the GWA monitors hurricane activity/the
rising tropopause/ETC activity
since the 50s/l ETC activity
since 1990/ the effect of an ETC
on London /how superwinds form/
the impact of ETCs on aircraft/data
from 21 recent storms/ UK as a breeding
ground for tornadoes/
the impact on the insurance industry/
future implications /threat
of ETCs to Europe and UK
