This week the far SE of Britain saw Storm Angus but many more people felt the effects of Monday's low pressure bringing gales, heavy rain and lots of flooding.
This week we have seen a one are of low pressure brush SE England on Sunday, bringing strong winds and gales to Kent and Sussex with heavy rain.
Then on Monday, through into early Tuesday, another area of low pressure bringing even more rain, gales and widespread flooding to northern England, Wales and SW England
Sunday’s event was named by the Met Office, on Saturday morning, as #StormAngus, the first named storm of this season. The second low pressure did not get named, with the second name in the list being Barbara.
This was always a tricky one for the Amber warning, it was the winds which were of concern in this event. A low pressure heading for these parts of the UK, can be slightly further south and miss the UK all together or be a bit further north and deeper, striking the most populated part of the UK. Ask our very own Mr Fish. It was Sunday morning, not too busy, but weather had been quite quiet so far this month. Most media people would have liked the name to be announced on Friday so they could engage fully with the message and the story of Angus. It was quite disappointing to miss that opportunity.
Angus resulted in flooding for Swanage and Plymouth, trees down, power out briefly, with gusts over 80mph in Kent, 94mph for the Channel Islands and 105mph for very exposed tip of northern France.
Naming of storms is now officially linked to Amber warnings but this time not just winds as rain and snow events are included. I’m not sure the linking of the Amber warning, which kicks of council processes and emergency service preparations, is ideal for what is essentially a communication and media tool – the Storm name.
So, off Angus went to Scandinavia
Next, hot on its heels was another low. We’d already had a lot of rain in southern Britain and so more heavy rain was always going to cause problems.
Someone commented that naming the storms has no impact on the outcome, which is true but we do use names every day, for countries, people, desks, shelves, classrooms, wards. It helps.
The point of naming storms was to give clearer information to help people to prepare for severe weather. I’m confused this week and I have quite a good idea of what is going on. It’s not been the best start, which is a shame, because I like the Storm Naming idea and I think it can really help people engage in the weather conversation.
SW England had 5 flood warnings and an Amber warning for rain on Monday morning. There was a yellow warning for rain for NE England too. Gt Manchester saw plenty of flooding with disruption to trams, rail services and roads. The M62 closed for a time. Newcastle was soaking, there was flooding in the Scottish Borders and further warnings for the Midlands too. The West Country saw further flooding as did parts of Wales. A ferry couldn't dock at Fishguard due to severe gales in the Irish Sea, so passengers spent several hours delayed out in rough seas. The winds were also strong with a gust of 100mph for Great Dun Fell which is admittedly 848 metres up in the Pennines but I was worried for trampolines where I live in Lothian with the noise going on outside.
When you are broadcasting, you want to have the most up-to-date information to hand. If a storm is being named or a severe weather warning is issued you want to have it in your bulletin. If the presenters/forecasters can’t grasp when these are going to be issued, we can’t construct our presentations properly. I did my Netweather video yesterday, wondering if #Barbara was going to be named. If it’s a recording you can re-do it, but if it’s live you just have to wait for the next broadcast and get on twitter.
The conversations need to be better. This is not a pure science issue, which perhaps the Amber and red warnings are initially, until they add on the impact side of the warnings. This is a communications tool, and science with communications have a history of struggling.
I asked the Met Office Press officer to explain, not in a complaint way but just to understand better.
... the criteria we use to name storms, namely that they are large scale wind storms which have the potential to cause impacts for which an amber weather warning is likely to be issued. Angus was a deep depression which resulted in an amber warning for wind being issued across the southeast of England.
For this season, the second year of our pilot project, we have made a slight tweak to the criteria so that we can consider naming those systems which have the potential to cause amber impacts from rain and/or snow too - this in partnership with other agencies such as the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and SEPA. In theory, this means we could have named yesterday's system as there was an amber warning for rain as well as two yellow wind warnings.
However, the Chief Meteorologist took the view yesterday that as the warnings were spatially and temporally quite separate and that the system was not as well defined that we wouldn't name.
When we have two systems as close together as this it can lead to confusion about what impacts are from what system, so we have tried to be clear that the impacts on Saturday night/Sunday were from Angus and that yesterday's low pressure was separate. I'm sure we'll be reviewing this example at the end of the season as we continue to tweak the storm naming process.
We're running a quick poll on the Netweather forum about whether the low should have been named or not. Mixed results so far - please let us know what you think by placing your vote and commenting in the discussion.
But we always should be careful about being knowledgeable after the event. Out in the very sharp hail yesterday evening with the wind whipping at my hood, treading in a rather deep puddle, I felt like I was in a storm. I’ll have to wait a bit longer for the arrival of real #StormBarbara.
