As forecast, winds were stronger than your January gale as the depression rapidly deepened at just the right (or wrong) time.

The visible satellite shot from NASA shows up this deep depression just north of Scotland beautifully.

Stornoway, located on the Isle of Lewis and just 15 metres above sea level recorded a wind gust to 113 mph. This ties the all-time record wind gust first set back in February 1962 according to Sean Batty. Interestingly Stornoway was the site just last winter which recorded the UK’s lowest sea level pressure in over 100 years at 939mb. The storm capital of the UK?

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

Also according to Sean Batty, unsurprisingly, Cairngorm takes the price for strongest high elevation gust, 140 mph. This was tweeted 4 hours ago so this site may have recorded a stronger gust since!

Severe gales ripped right across Scotland, northern parts of Northern Ireland as well as N England overnight with all train services across Scotland suspended until 10am this morning. While winds slowly ease today, we await the next deep low which brings further severe gales and storm-force conditions later tonight and tomorrow as well as heavy snowfall to higher ground, even some to lower levels. This time the focus of strongest winds is likely to be the Western and Northern Isles where 100 mph gusts are possible over Orkney and Shetland.

The ECMWF did a pretty good job in recent days depicting the stronger than usual winds, seeing the ‘rapid deepening’ and transfer of some of the more typical, stronger mid-level energy down to the surface.

Fuelled By 265 mph Jet Stream!

If you flew from New York to London yesterday, you likely experienced your fasted ever flight (unless you had the privilege of travelling by concorde).

The super strong 265 mph jet, which fuelled our storm, reduced trans-Atlantic flight times by as much as an hour and a half! That’s pretty incredible to slice that amount of time off. Eastbound flights crossing the Atlantic are typically shorter but not quite that short. Unfortunately those flying west towards North America are likely experiencing longer flight times as a result of the incredible headwind which I’m sure will burn quite a bit more fuel.

The next storm system pushes later this afternoon and tonight as the other beast exits and pushes into Scandinavia.

Rain, hail, sleet and snow will accompany this system and we can expect the potential for LOW LEVEL snow across Scotland as this bumps into the cold air left in the wake of the first system. Significant hill snow is likely.

GFS surface at 00z Saturday.

Mind how I’ve been harping on about this ‘so called’ stratospheric warming event’.

Here’s the proof that it’s just happened. Let’s wait and see what happens as we head for mid-month. Right now, the N hemispheric pattern is almost identical to this time last year with severe cold over eastern North America that’s fuelling the powerhouse jet and in turn bringing unusually deep depressions into the UK. However, based on that big warming over the N Atlantic towards the end of the animation, this suggests that the current spell of Atlantic fury doesn’t last.

See video for today’s discussion.

[/s2If][s2If current_user_cannot(access_s2member_level1)][magicactionbox id=”18716″][/s2If]