03/10/09 - First Autumn winds

[5hort5]

So today could be considered the first autumn storm of the year with winds over 60 mph on the west coast of north Scotland. Max winds in Warrington were nothing to special with the winds maxing out at just over 25 mph. It made my new (ish – well this years) polycarb greenhouse rock and roll and I am waiting to see how it stands up to a real big storm in the next few months. Main point for me was as the squall line that crossed the north west at 2.00pm ish, the temp dropped by 4 degrees from 17.8 to 13.4 which made the day feel a touch on the cold side. Looking at the rain radar as the line passed it was more about 10 miles deep at it's widest yet over 300 miles wide spanning east to west and some people must have had some pretty intense rain from it.

So this being the main storm to bring some of the leaves down so far this year do you think it'll be the biggest or will there be worse to come. For the people in the south then you may have noticed a slight breeze today but the further north you went the stronger it got. :-)

[ron1863]

I was in Edinburgh today and went for a walk up Corstorphine hill and the wind felt a lot stronger than 25mph. We will definitely get worse "storms" than today's.

[Tringa]

It is always interesting to see and feel the effects of changes in weather and sometimes the changes are dramatic, like the tempearture fall you mentioned 5hort5, and generally they are more extreme in the north.

I think Scotland is a country with weather that lets you know you are alive.

I agree with ron, the best/worst is yet to come.

[earthdragon64]

Yesterday's strong winds weren't nearly as bad as the ones we got a week or two ago. More leaves came down yesterday, but more, and larger, branches came down in the previous winds.

I'd be very surprised if we don't get any worse during Autumn and Winter, certainly in previous years we've had a lot worse.

[Amoeba]

Here in Edinburgh it's calm at the moment (a little gusty, nothing out of the ordinary), and we had some stronger (but not exactly strong) winds a few days/weeks ago, but I think the strongest of the year so far was in the summer when we had that July of rain and wind.

It'll be interesting to see how things turn out over autumn and winter. As a kid I used to notice distinctive patterns in the winds between the seasons, associating autumn with high winds followed by a calm winter, then strong winds picking up again over Jan/Feb and calming down after March. Nowadays though it appears a bit more random. This year, March to May/June was very calm and hot, and summer was cool and blustery. Now that autumn is setting in it seems to have calmed down again.

[big bill]

Up in the Highlands like earthdragon 64 states yesterdays strong winds were not too bad ,up here a distance of a few miles can make all the differrence .
Inverness is 18 miles west of Nairn and a few months back they had torrential rains and high winds that caused flooding and closure of roads and rail networks here in Nairn on the actual day we were unaffected ,but the area surrounding Nairn was west ,east ,north and south its as if Nairn sits in its own little zone.
There has been times when the winds here have been blowing at 40MPH+ and a few miles either side have been basking in sunshine ,but there is definately more adverse weather with stronger winds to come this year especially up here in the North