THEY SAID IT would be as bad as 1986′s Hurricane Charlie, with winds as high as 110 km per hour battering the country.
In the end, the hurricane warnings proved to be no more than a storm in a teacup, with the highest winds recorded 93 km per hour at Roches Point in Cork. So what happened? We turned to Karl Mehlhorn of The Irish Weather Network.
“The frontal system moving up from the south didn’t hang around too long. It moved through smartly. When these fronts stall over the country is when you get high flooding risks. But the active front moved from south to north very quickly. The period of heavy rainfall lasted for a few hours not 10 hours thankfully, which would have led to widespread floods.
“The deep area of low pressure in the south of Ireland came north on a vigorous jet stream but filled as it moved closer to the island so winds could have been a little stronger in the south but were still nowhere near hurricane strength.”
“Some of the papers had billed it as being the strongest in 26 years but that was never going to happen. What we had was a deep area of low pressure for this time of year. (One that is) more likely to happen in November and December rather than August.
In August it is unseasonal to see the pressure falling to this low a level but in November it’s common and would just be classed as a windy day. Gusts in access of 100km an hour were not unusual in November or the Winter months” either he said.
The significance around high winds this time of year are due to trees in full leaf which weigh down the branches so when a strong gust occurs, these branches can break off easier than in later Autumn or Winter. It would only take a gust of 70 to 80km per hour to bring down branches and uproot small trees which did happen across the southern half of the country even inland locations where gusts of 75 to 90km per hour occurred.
The highest rainfall totals were recorded in the south of the country, with 25mm to 35mm of rain recorded. Further north it was “more like 12 to 20mm” he said.
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