Storm Aileen - First Autumn Storm Tuesday night into Wednesday morning

[knightstorm87]

Cheers, it's good to be back too :-)  Now back to my original post about Aileen, I think whilst it wasn't a particularly unusual storm in terms of the strength of the wind what was somewhat more surprising was how early in the season it was and the fact that some of the strongest gusts recorded weren't where the strongest winds where forecast and therefore no warnings where officially issued for those areas. It's going to be a very interesting autumn and winter I feel, with quite a few deep low pressures coming through and perhaps some colder spells too. I'm hoping for a decent snow event this winter as it has been a good 4 or 5 years at least since we last had something significant here in that regard !

[The PIT]

Basically a 15 minute wind storm here where winds gusted up to 55 mph. After that a few to mid forties but nothing of note.  I wouldn't really call it storm due to the very short duration. Managed to break part of my Buddleja, covered my car in bits of leaf a few twigs down and a small branch on the pavement next to the ring road. 

[Dorsetbred]

Not an empty dustbin blown over down here, seemingly not that breezy, apart from the odd leaf or two..

[knightstorm87]

At least the names of the storms this year are mildly less comical then some we have had in the last couple of seasons like Barney and Doris lol 

[Chris.R]

2 minutes ago, knightstorm87 said:

At least the names of the storms this year are mildly less comical then some we have had in the last couple of seasons like Barney and Doris lol 

 I can't take Brian seriously though for some reason.  Caroline sounds good though. 

[osmposm]

22 hours ago, Surrey said:

So Heathrow outside of the warning areas takes seconds place last night with a gust of 63mph. I'm finding that hard to believe unless it was associated with some kind of shower. Have seen a fair few branches down on my way to work, did a 2 mile drive from the village I am in to the nearest town and stopped and moved 2 branches out the way. Nothing major damage wise from this one I don't think, just the usual branches and fences fallen down 

I can confirm the Heathrow gust subjectively. I'm 10 or 11 miles almost due east of Heathrow, and just before 4 am yesterday the wind suddenly strengthened dramatically for a few minutes, with a huge amount of noise from the trees and the smell of mashed leaves - loads of them on the ground when I was up later, plus twigs and a few small branches. The noise and smell reminded me of the great Oct 1987 storm (though nothing like as strong and shorter-lived), when I was also up and about in the small hours. As in 1987 there was no accompanying rain at all, so presumably not a squall line or anything - quite surreal, actually. But to put it in perspective, in '87 London recorded gusts well over 90 mph.

[knightstorm87]

12 hours ago, osmposm said:

I can confirm the Heathrow gust subjectively. I'm 10 or 11 miles almost due east of Heathrow, and just before 4 am yesterday the wind suddenly strengthened dramatically for a few minutes, with a huge amount of noise from the trees and the smell of mashed leaves - loads of them on the ground when I was up later, plus twigs and a few small branches. The noise and smell reminded me of the great Oct 1987 storm (though nothing like as strong and shorter-lived), when I was also up and about in the small hours. As in 1987 there was no accompanying rain at all, so presumably not a squall line or anything - quite surreal, actually. But to put it in perspective, in '87 London recorded gusts well over 90 mph.

In '87 storm 94mph was recorded at the London Weather Centre and 108mph at the top of the BT Tower although that is obviously at quite some considerable elevation so probably not representative of gusts at street level where 80 to 100mph was more typical, in coastal regions gusts where in excess of 110-120mph.