when was the last time PL games were called off because the strength of the wind

Anyway, IN MY BACK YARD Friday looks bad again +80mph and from the SE this time for a time.

Well, the widespread impacts of this horrific sustained Atlantic-driven winter pummelling are really coming home to roost.  Talk yesterday from economists and bankers about impacts on the economy in the first quarter; tens of thousands without power again; thousands flooded, with worse to come; politicians spouting forth like demented gargoyles - true horror.

Sadly, but almost inevitablty, the storm forecast for tomorrow will be the straw that breaks the camel's back for a lot areas - such as mine - which have thus far just escaped the worst of the flooding...

With at least another 25mm of rain forecast for much of the southern UK, and when you consider that for every square metre of land, that each millimetre of rain produces one litre of water in total across that square metre, and given the super-saturated nature of any supposedly non-porous surfaces, then the 25mm of rain on Friday-Saturday is going to sadly lead to a hell of a lot of river based and surface water flooding, not to mention groundwater flooding in the aquifer areas.

We must hope that the weather really does dry up after this next event.

WI

It's showing signs of winding down at last.

Friday's storm could well be the last powerful system, with subsequent lows potentially in the fill and dare I say disruptive phase as they approach the UK.

A huge relief for most I would think.

Quite a breezy start up here this morning, though not unexpected. High gust here at home 70.7mph at 03:28 with average wind speeds right now of 55mph (severe gale 9) and gusts of around 65mph (storm force 10).

And it's damp and cold as well 

I havent checked the models out of fatigue and fear, so if thats the case then its great news

Sorry but have to agree , yes other parts of the UK it has been severe  . and before the police step in i am not pissed either

Well my view as posted elsewhere:-

I suspect not everyone will agree with my view but the ongoing effects of what is an exceptional spell of weather mean that each of these big lows have effects well beyond what they may well have had in isolation. Continued significant rainfall already mean that yesterdays low was an issue, even before the swathe of damaging winds that came with it. Even here the winds were impressive and the recorded gust of 68mph at Odiham is a pretty rare event

Believe it or not GFS manages to predict more rain here from next week's filling low than from Friday's active system... the curse of the slow moving frontal system. Not much wind around though.

GFS then threatens a huge deluge later next week, but there's no support from the other models for the cut-off low responsible, with the others mostly going for a standard frontal progression through the UK.

That said, its worth keeping an eye on in case those other models amplify things at all.

As for tomorrow, WRF and to a lesser extent EURO-4 show some large 3-hour returns moving across Central-Southern parts behind the leading front, which from the FAX charts looks to be assocaited with some form of organised convection, although it could be that the wrap-around occlusion is being brought through a lot more quickly by the higher-res models (as WRF models no form of frontal rain around midnight Saturday, despite the FAX showing the occluded front over the south).

MetO has a band of heavy rain (8-16mm/hr) lying all the way aong the South Coast tomorrow midday, from the W edge of Dorset to the E edge of Sussex

Well said RobR, I too had not experienced the power of the wind before, in this location. It was amazing, and scary to say the least. Two houses just at the back of us lost several fence panels each, ours only survived because I had fastened them all in with metal brackets. Rostherne number 2, the met office station a few miles from us reported 60 or 65 mph gusts yesterday evening. If I`m not mistaken that`s storm force 10 on the Beaufort scale.

So I think idot should definately have an extra `i` between the d and the o, after the comments he made!

My mate is a tree surgeon so obviously been very busy this winter with fallen trees and looking at unstable ones, he fears there will be alot more coming down due to obviously the soaked ground but also because they are taking a battering from the left and the right, bit like a boxer getting combitions to the head from both sides.

Evergreens seem to be the worse because they have shallow roots, tall conifers etc

More of the same on the way, not good news

They make a heck of a noise when they do come down even at a distance away

Poor trees have had a hell of a battering over the years from drought and freezings temps as well

What if it falls in a forest, and there's no one around?....

Turns out, the wave did engulf the pub!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26150788

Then no one will hear it

I live by a forest and they make a hell of a noise when they go

This is an interesting PWS report from a VP2 yesterday right on the sea front near Blackpool.
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IENGLAND580&day=12&year=2014&month=2
Not sure if the extreme rain was a real record of sea spray or just the wind tripping the bucket either by directly blowing it or moving the mounting.
The wind shows 150kph gusts  which is about 100mph.

Wow, waves coming through third floor windows! I'd like to know who that bloke in the orange waterproofs is in the pic, and whether he got swept off the wall. At least if he did he would hopefully have only been knocked onto the road rather than back out to sea!

The main issue with the wind tomorrow evening and overnight is going to be just how long the strong winds continue for across the south.

GFS has the strongest winds inland at just over 100kph

21z 100kph (62mph) gusts widely across the south
http://modeles2.meteociel.fr/modeles_gfs/runs/2014021312/33-289UK.GIF?13-12

06z 100kph gusts still across central south and SE England
http://modeles2.meteociel.fr/modeles_gfs/runs/2014021312/42-289UK.GIF?13-12

However the high res WRF model has widespread inland gusts of 110kph or more for almost 12 hours. This has been modelled consistently for several runs now and is consistent with the latest BBC forecasts saying inland gusts could reach 70mph.

110kph+ (68mph) gusts get into Hampshire at 20z tomorrow
http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/wrfnmm/runs/2014021312/nmmuk-11-32-0.png?13-18

110kph gusts just about clearing Hampshire at 07z
http://modeles.meteociel.fr/modeles/wrfnmm/runs/2014021312/nmmuk-11-43-0.png?13-18

So, given how saturated the ground is, the duration of this severe wind event is likely to be as much a cause of the overall amount of damage as the strength of the winds.

Your comments here Dave prompted me to take a look back to see on how many dates wind gusts have exceeded 100kph (62mph) at Odiham this Autumn / Winter. The answer is a fair number which I suspect is very unusual. We may have two more dates to add to this list by Saturday morning given the strong winds are going to occur tomorrow evening and overnight (as they did on 23/24 Dec). We could potentially see something similar to the reading of 24 Dec tomorrow night. But the St Jude's storm should remain the worst wind storm of the winter in these parts in terms of peak gusts.

Days with wind gusts greater than 100kph at Odiham since October 2013

28 Oct 13 126.0kph (78 mph)
24 Dec 13 114.9kph
12 Feb 14 109.3kph
25 Jan 14 105.6kph
23 Dec 14 105.6kph

http://www.cazatormentas.net/images/stories/portadas/2014/febrero/ulla/atlanticne2.jpg

Discussions over on wunderground revolve around this potentially being a storm with a sting yet i.e. following the Shapiro-Keyser model of cyclone development, whereby the cloud head (occluded front in the traditional model) wraps around the storm and forms a hooked feature, near the tip of which a sting jet (a relatively small i.e. 100km across area of very strong winds) can occur as a region of dry air interacts with the cloud mass and causes rapid evaporation, so leading to rapid descent of the air (evaporation requires energy which is taken out of the air, cooling it and increasing the density, causing it to fall), which brings the strong high-level winds down to the surface.

That's my attempt to summarise a complex subject in a way that most people can follow - I hope it worked! 

Once a sting jet has occured within the storm, the system has peaked and those extra-strong winds will 'fan out' and dissipate, leaving a strong storm system but without the locallised region of enchanced winds to worry about.

The fact that it still looks to bring 80mph gusts to the South Coast for many, many hours, reflects on how impressive this storm system is. It's also carrying about as much moisture as a UK-bound storm can usually manage at this time of year! 

PPN for tomorrows storm just showing on the radar, could be many hours of rain

Fascinating stuff Simon - The one in October was during the destructive stingjet on that morning

http://estofex.org/

The parts that jump out to me most are:

"Compared to past events however,it has excellent influx of barely modified subtropical air, which features high moisture content and weak mid-layer lapse rates."

"Despite lack of confidence in a forced line of storms, any shower/thunderstorm event could support downward momentum transport of very intense winds (e.g. 850 hPa winds aoa 45 m/s with SRH-1 well in excess of 400 m^2/s^2 !)"

"Despite the ongoing wrap-up process of the thermal wave, this depression certainly features an higher tornado risk compared to the past events. Extreme LL shear and some modest onshore LLCAPE back that idea and an isolated strong tornado event can't be ruled out especially over SE-Ireland, SW-S and C UK."

The strong tornado possibility doesn't come up very often on ESTOFEX. "Extreme" low level shear sounds rather dramatic...!

Also, the models are showing rainfall intensities not really any greater than for a typical Atlantic storm, despite the higher moisture content that is expected with this incoming storm. Could they be underestimating the rainfall...?