GFS gust speeds are at the surface. Arpege and Icon at 10m. Not sure about the others without checking.

Blowing a hooley when I got up an hour ago with rain splashing the windows, now relatively calm and rain stopped. BBC forecast showing a succession of squall lines so I expect the strongest gusts and rain to go hand in hand today.

Potent squall running from W of Stoke back into S.Wales with thundery activity

I read in the local press that Edinburgh Castle was closed during yesterday due to high winds, but the wind wasn't as much as an issue here as it has been elsewhere in the UK (which is typical of the fact that the more "interesting" weather normally happens elsewhere in the UK, other than here).

Nevertheless, it is the amount of rain which we have had from that which has been a much greater issue here, rather than the wind. As at 7am this morning, this particular event had produced the incredible total of 35.0 mm of rain at Edinburgh Gogarbank, along with 30.6 mm at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh. Those aren't typos either, as that is the actual amount of rain which we have had from this particular event and it is still chucking it down with rain here, even as I write.

That already makes the 24 hour period up until 9am this morning, our wettest such 24 hour period of this winter by quite a distance and in most years, that would easily be enough to give us our wettest day of the entire year except that we had a few days during last summer, which were even wetter than than.

Now, the Met Office did issue both yellow and amber warnings for rain, but these areas were further to our south which means that we are actually outside those warning areas (although we along with everyone else in the UK, remain within that UK-wide yellow warning for wind). This shows that the Met Office have clearly underestimated the impact which the rainfall from this system would end up having in terms of the size of the area which this has covered, as we clearly should have at the very least, been under a yellow warning for rain (as well for wind), given what has now happened.

Rough here overnight - seems to be increasing ferocity now.  Just   had a major power dip (enough to kill the computer)  Very unusual here as all lines  between the sub station and here are underground. 

I suspect we have just had a tree come down in one  of the  outlying   areas (that use overheads)   and  the power has been shed from that area.

Very windy yes but nothing spectacular so far. Amber warning only kicked in at 8 am and runs to 9 pm so a long way to go yet.

That’s only a few miles from here but it doesn’t seem particularly wild here as yet. In fact things have calmed down a bit since I woke up at 7. Max gust at Farnborough only showing as 48mph so far. 

Very wild here in Basingstoke at the moment. Just had a brief power outage for a couple of seconds a short time ago.

Just looking at the SSE Networks app and I can see I am very lucky to have power right now. At 0850 there was a major power failure in the Basingstoke area. Currently 762 postcodes are without power mostly in the centre, to the west and to the south of the town - as far as Preston Candover. That is a major outage. To the north east of the town centre where I am most areas still have power.

There are also major outages in the Chippenham area - 153 postcodes affected and to the south of Swindon around Royal Wootton Bassett.

Latest from the Met 

https://twitter.com/metoffice?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Yes, it’s not overly windy across much of Scotland currently. If you could get rain-generated electricity though we would be doing well!

i thought gfs was 10 metres Brian

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gefs_table.php?x=0&y=0&lat=51.5085&lon=-0.12574&run=0&ext=fr&mode=13&sort=

I thought wind turbines were designed to lock the blades and stop turning above a certain wind speed. You really don't want blades spinning madly in 80mph winds! There are a number of You Tube videos demonstrating what can happen if they malfunction.

Is this as forecast or worse or less?

Not too bad here so far, but obviously reports from Basingstoke are concerning. Hopefully some weakening of the squall before it gets here

Sky dish shaking like mad and signal cutting out a lot. How strong a gust can these dishes take?

They should be fine in these conditions. I think they start to struggle once winds get over 120mph. The all time wind generation record was broken in December during storm Brendan which had similar sized gusts to Ciara.

I think grid management is the more likely explanation. The wholesale price is virtually zero this morning. Hence a lot of imports from the continent. Suspect it makes more sense to switch off some wind turbines and keep the coal generators going because of the cost of stopping and starting, though I’m surprised re gas as that’s easy to flex.