Tag: Storm Eowyn

Was Storm Eowyn Worse than the Great Storm of 1987?

UK, Storm Éowyn (January 2025) was an exceptionally severe storm, but it was not generally considered worse than the Great Storm of 1987.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Sometimes I am lost for words!

For years the Met Office has acknowledged that no UK storm in recent years has gone close to the severity of a string of storms in the 1980s and 90s.

For instance, this from their State of the UK Climate Report 2023:

State of the UK Climate 2023

But according to their new State of Climate Report, the Great Storm of 1987 was nothing compared to Storm Eowyn in January 2025:

Climate extremes are becoming the new ‘normal’ for the UK – Met Office

And here is the evidence, you disbelieving plebs!

The 1987 storm only SEEMED bad, because the trees were in leaf!

This dishonesty goes well beyond mere gaslighting. To suggest Eowyn was worse is an outright lie.

Part of the explanation for fewer station counts in 1987 is that the storm really only hit the south east at full intensity, whereas Eowyn cut a swathe from N Ireland to eastern Scotland.

But the real reason is that Eowyn passed over mainly upland landscapes and rocky coasts, all of course highly exposed where wind speeds are naturally much higher.

Look at the map for Eowyn:

Eowyn ran straight across the hills of N Ireland, the exposed coasts of Western Scotland, then passed over Lanarkshire Hills and for good measure exited over high clifftops on the North Sea coast. Just about all of those 70 knots+ occurred in highly exposed locations.

Top wind speed was 100 mph on top of a 900ft hill at Drumalbin. followed six other hopelessly exposed sites; Brizelee, for instance, is 800ft high, Aberdaron is at the top of a high cliff at the tip of the Lleyn Peninsula and so on:

In contrast, gusts of over 90 knots were recorded at several other coastal locations. Shoreham is officially the highest at 98 knots, though Stephen Burt’s analysis found much stronger winds at Gorleston:

(PDF) The Great Storm of 15-16 October 1987

Even well inland at low altitude sites, gusts exceeded 80 knots. The London Weather Centre recorded 82 knots at 2.50 am, and 86 knots, (99 mph), was recorded at Gatwick Airport at 4.30 am.

To compare mountain and clifftop sites with lowland ones, where people actually live, and in this case sadly died, is not scientific and it most certainly is not worthy of any scientific organisation.

To put things into perspective, Eowyn brought gusts of only 58 knots in Eskdalemuir, which lay in the centre of the storm track but is a much less exposed location.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

Well, just take another look at their chart:

Why on earth would they want to highlight the 1987 storm, if it was not to make people think Eowyn was much worse?

Daily Mail Ramp Up Climate Alarm with More Lies

I’m not even going to comment on this latest absurd report from The Mail. It shows just how far the MSM has descended into publishing such puerile nonsense. It is little wonder that very few people now believe what the media tells them anymore.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14337241/Climate-change-outbreaks-DIARRHOEA-scientists.html

I’m not even going to comment on this latest absurd report from The Mail. It shows just how far the MSM has descended into publishing such puerile nonsense. It is little wonder that very few people now believe what the media tells them anymore.

But the very first paragraph is very revealing:

From the unprecedented heatwave in 2022 to the deadly Storm Eowyn just this month, climate change is already wreaking havoc on Britain’s weather. 

The summer of 2022 was not even as hot as 1976, which rather destroys the narrative.

But where do they get the idea that Storm Eowyn was caused by climate change?

As a minute’s research would have told the pathetic journalist who wrote this drivel, Eowyn was a run of the mill storm, the sort which has happened many times in the past.

But it certainly proves the point of what I have been saying for years now – that the Met Office’s naming of storms and the use of recently introduced clifftop and hilltop sites to produce scary headlines has now created an atmosphere of hysteria, upon which the corrupt media feed.

Of course, I might be wrong.

But I have not seen anything from the Met Office so far that puts Eowyn into perspective, or acknowledges the fact that there is no trend towards more intense or frequent storms.

Indeed, they have just published a new post on their blog, “Is further stormy weather on the way?”, which would have offered the chance to put the record straight.

Mace Head’s “Record Wind” Claims Only Based on 22 Years Data

You will of course remember the claims last week that Eowyn had set a new wind speed record in Ireland.

Leaving aside the fact that Kilkeel in N Ireland has the official record of 124 mph in 1974, I wondered just how far back Met Eireann’s records went for Mace Head.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

You will of course remember the claims last week that Eowyn had set a new wind speed record in Ireland.

Leaving aside the fact that Kilkeel in N Ireland has the official record of 124 mph in 1974, I wondered just how far back Met Eireann’s records went for Mace Head.

So I asked them, and have just received this reply:

Thank you for your email.

The AWS at Mace Head was installed in 2003 and has been measuring wind at that location since 2003.

You can get all past hourly, daily and monthly datasets for Mace Head on the Met Éireann historical data webpage here: 

https://www.met.ie/climate/available-data/historical-data

Even by our own Met Office’s practices, this takes the biscuit.

How can they declare a record at a site that has only been in use for 22 years? No reputable organisation would do this. It has no more legitimacy than the Kilkeel in N Ireland declaring record winds on The Needles, which began recording wind speeds in 1996.

Mace Head, which has been measuring temperatures for 50 years, is in one of the most exposed locations on the west coast of Ireland. So much so that Ireland’s Weather Channel predicted it would set a record the day before the storm.

It will always be top of the list, or close to it, when gales hit that part of the coast.

So Met Eireann have no idea whether winds higher than 114 mph have hit Mace Head before 2003 – say in 1945 or 1961, when the previous record of 113 mph was set.

To declare a record with such a short set of data devalues the process. All they can legitimately claim is that it was the strongest gust since 2003.

The Media’s Goes Full Hysterical Over Eowyn

To the shame of the MSM, the reporting of Storm Eowyn has been disgracefully hysterical, untruthful and misleading.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

To the shame of the MSM, the reporting of Storm 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:

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.

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:

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 storms like Eowyn really are unprecedented and the consequence of climate change. The media has done a good job of brainwashing them!