From the Met Office (now based in Devon!) website:
"TV weather presenter Michael Fish will long be remembered for telling viewers, the evening before the storm struck, that there would be no hurricane. But he was unfortunate. Fish was referring to a tropical cyclone over the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean that day. This storm, he said, would not reach the British Isles - and it didn't.
It's worthwhile to consider whether or not the storm was, in any sense, a hurricane - the description applied to it by so many people.
In the Beaufort scale of wind force, Hurricane Force (Force 12) is defined as a wind of 64 knots or more, sustained over a period of at least 10 minutes. Gusts, which are comparatively short-lived (but cause much of the destruction) are not taken into account. By this definition, Hurricane Force winds occurred locally but were not widespread.
The highest hourly-mean speed recorded in the UK was 75 knots, at the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse. Winds reached Force 11 (56-63 knots) in many coastal regions of south-east England. Inland, however, their strength was considerably less. At the London Weather Centre, for example, the mean wind speed did not exceed 44 knots (Force 9). At Gatwick Airport, it never exceeded 34 knots (Force 8).
The Great Storm of 1987 did not originate in the tropics and was not, by any definition, a hurricane - but it was certainly exceptional."
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Date: 2007-01-18 11:14 pm (UTC)"TV weather presenter Michael Fish will long be remembered for telling viewers, the evening before the storm struck, that there would be no hurricane. But he was unfortunate. Fish was referring to a tropical cyclone over the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean that day. This storm, he said, would not reach the British Isles - and it didn't.
It's worthwhile to consider whether or not the storm was, in any sense, a hurricane - the description applied to it by so many people.
In the Beaufort scale of wind force, Hurricane Force (Force 12) is defined as a wind of 64 knots or more, sustained over a period of at least 10 minutes. Gusts, which are comparatively short-lived (but cause much of the destruction) are not taken into account. By this definition, Hurricane Force winds occurred locally but were not widespread.
The highest hourly-mean speed recorded in the UK was 75 knots, at the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse. Winds reached Force 11 (56-63 knots) in many coastal regions of south-east England. Inland, however, their strength was considerably less. At the London Weather Centre, for example, the mean wind speed did not exceed 44 knots (Force 9). At Gatwick Airport, it never exceeded 34 knots (Force 8).
The Great Storm of 1987 did not originate in the tropics and was not, by any definition, a hurricane - but it was certainly exceptional."