Ophelia became a major hurricane where no storm had before | Hacker News Reader

Ophelia became a major hurricane where no storm had before

arstechnica.com

141 pointssndean31 comments

30 years ago, almost the same day, a hurricane category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson scale reached France and the British Isles : http://tempetes.meteofrance.fr/L-ouragan-du-15-au-16-octobre... (in French).

Edit: fixed the quotation on the Saphir Simpson scale that was incorrectly taken from the article.

That did not make landfall as a hurricane.

"In south-east England, where the greatest damage occurred, gusts of 70 knots (130 km/h; 81 mph)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1987

However, it takes Sustained winds of 111–129 mph to be a Category 3.

Also the great storm of 1987 made landfall significantly south of this one. http://engweb.swan.ac.uk/~hewstonr/Great_Storm.html vs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ophelia_(2017)#/medi...

The Meteo France article I quoted is actually a bit misleading, it talks about a category 3 hurricane in a not really rigorous way «damages caused by this storm has been on par with the ones done by a category 3 hurricane» even tough you're right the sustained wind speed has been below the limit for a category 3. It's still strong enough to be classified as a category 1 (in england) or 2 in France.

The actual reason why it wasn't a proper hurricane was because this word is reserved for tropical cyclones. Neither the great storm or Ophelia are tropical.

Correlations between the measured wind speeds and damage done by that storm, and another in 1999, have been used to estimate the intensity of the Great Storm of 1703 as a category 2 extra-tropical hurricane.

http://forms2.rms.com/rs/729-DJX-565/images/ws_1703_windstor...

In August 1971 I witnessed a category 4 hurricane ("ouragan" in French [1]) that wrecked Vallée de Joux, a clock-making valley in the Swiss Jura (a little bit North of the Alps). All trees were down, similar to the landscape near Mount St Helens after its most recent eruption. There are records in the same location of another hurricane in August 1890, as well as one in 1624.

[1] http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/ouragan

August, when it is hotter. Not October closer to winter..

Right. Weather, across centuries.

That one stranded me at Heathrow thirty years ago. Where I thougth back another twenty years, 1967, also to the very day, when an epic storm hit southern Scandinavia, tearing down brick walls and huge swaths of forest. No hurricane that one, but fifty years later still remebered here as the october storm. Is October 17th somehow statistically significant?

It happens also to have turned the afternoon sky a deep Mars-like red. It was quite a fascinating sight, lots of people comparing it to Blade Runner 2049 or Instagram filters.

Heh, we have a similar experience here in the bay area from all the wild fires.

Confirmed. The iOS weather app even listed “Smoke” instead of “Cloudy” or “Overcast.” It’s not funny though. For example, my folks live on a mesa surrounded by pine trees and vegetation on three sides. Last week, an intentionally-set fire (quickly contained) took out their phone lines.

I'm in London for the O'Reilly Software Architects conference and I looked out my window at one point and was like "woah" that's an ominous orange sky. It was really cool and weird.

Carrying dust from Sahara, but also smoke from all the wildfires in Portugal right now.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-41635906

Many parts of the UK (including London where I am) had an oddly beautiful phenomenon thanks to Ophelia http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41635906

We had the same eerie yellow sky in north-western France. The sun shone through the clouds at some point with a dark orange/brown glow.

Quite an experience :-)

When I saw it today it reminded me of the nuclear winter in The Strain.

It has been a few weeks now that the air here has been uncharacteristically warm. I've heard quite a few people remark on this totally unprompted. Today was 21 degrees here, when it normally would be 12-15 tops.

All that energy will have to go somewhere.

The south of the UK often has a last gasp of summer in late Sept or early Oct. So the temps aren't that unusual.

A couple of years ago I was living on the south coast.

Towards the end of a recent summer we had a no-holds-barred tropical storm. Not only did lightning put on an incredible show across a huge area, but the external air temperature and humidity were tropical.

Going outdoors was like stepping into a hot house, with torrents of warm rain.

I've never experienced anything like it in the UK before.

Not much of an effect in Dublin so far.

Any rain or clouds?

Light rain. Bit of wind.

Have to say, while it is tragic that a few people have died on the roads, the way that Irish people handle a "National Emergency" like this is hilarious. Gotta love some of the dry humour going round!

N. Ireland for some reason has decided to close schools tomorrow as well. Seems like a bit of an over reaction.

They literally have no parliament, Government or decision making capacity right now. Both days of closures in NI were clear copy and paste efforts within an hour of the rest of Ireland announcing same. Not a great way to make decisions !

On the bright side I guess they did make a decision.

Unfortunately this early stage venture was practically assured of founder conflict :P

Hmmm... why wouldn't it be a good way to make decisions, assuming that the Republic of Ireland's weather people are competent, and their own people were unavailable (for whatever reason)?

Some things are independent of politics, and tomorrow's weather is pretty high on that list. :-)

As an aside,...

"The Irish National Meteorological Service, Met Éireann..."

Someone please tell me there's an "An Bord Rain" joke around here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bord_Snip

(Dang it, I can't find a link for An Bord Bun.)

That'd be An Bord Baiste to you...

Niiice! Thank you!

The baptised board?

Do you mean An Bord Báistí?

Feck it, I do. My Irish is banjaxed after ten years away from home.

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