Storm Eunice is in full flow as I write this and has already broken the record for the fastest ever gust recorded in England. Before the wind even really got going here in Reading, where I work as a natural hazard forecaster, I had already watched my wheelie bins fly past my window (I since tied them down).
Comparisons are being made with previous storms, particularly the “Burns’ Day Storm” of January 1990, which killed dozens of people, and the October 1987 “Great Storm”. Although less intense, Eunice may be meteorologically similar to the 1987 storm, with the chance of a “sting jet” – a rare but highly damaging phenomenon caused by a break between the warm and cold fronts in a storm. This allows very fast winds, normally kept high in the atmosphere, to reach the ground and lash the surface like a bullwhip.
In 1987, the BBC weather forecaster Michael Fish was famously caught out by the severity of the Great Storm. What has really changed since the late 1980s is the quality of our forecasting and warnings. The steady improvement in weather and climate forecasting has been caused by unimaginably more powerful supercomputers, much better scientific understanding of the earth’s natural processes, and better communication of risks and early warnings.
