The Burns' Day Storm (also known as Cyclone Daria) was an extremely violent windstorm that took place on 25–26 January 1990 over

North-Western Europe Northwestern Europe, or Northwest Europe, is a loosely defined subregion of Europe, overlapping Northern Europe, Northern and Western Europe. The region can be defined both geographically and ethnography, ethnographically. Geographic defini ...

. It is one of the strongest

European windstorm European windstorms are powerful extratropical cyclones which form as cyclonic windstorms associated with areas of low atmospheric pressure. They can occur throughout the year, but are most frequent between October and March, with peak intensit ...

s on record. This storm has received different names, as there is no official list of such events in Europe. Starting on Burns Day, the birthday of the Scottish poet

Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...

, it caused widespread damage and

hurricane A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

-force winds over a wide area.

Meteorological history

The storm began as a

cold front A cold front is the leading edge of a cooler mass of air at ground level that replaces a warmer mass of air and lies within a pronounced surface trough of low pressure. It often forms behind an extratropical cyclone (to the west in the Norther ...

over the Northern Atlantic Ocean on 23 January. By 24 January, it had a minimum central

pressure Pressure (symbol: ''p'' or ''P'') is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure (also spelled ''gage'' pressure)The preferred spelling varies by country and e ...

of 992 millibars (29.3 inHg) and began to undergo

explosive cyclogenesis Explosive cyclogenesis (also referred to as a weather bomb, meteorological bomb, explosive development, bomb cyclone, or bombogenesis) is the rapid deepening of an Extratropical cyclone, extratropical cyclonic low-pressure area. The change in pr ...

, which was sometimes referred to as a weather bomb. It made landfall on the morning of January 25 over Ireland. It then tracked over to

Ayrshire Ayrshire ( gd, Siorrachd Inbhir Àir, ) is a historic county and registration county in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine and it borders the counties of Re ...

in Scotland. The lowest pressure of 949 mbar (28 inHg) was estimated near

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

around 16:00. After hitting the United Kingdom, the storm tracked rapidly east towards

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and caused major damage and 30 deaths in the

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and

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

Winds

The strongest sustained winds recorded were between 70 and 75mph (110–120 km/h), comparable to a weak Category 1 hurricane or Hurricane-force 12 on the

Beaufort Scale The Beaufort scale is an empirical measure that relates wind speed to observed conditions at sea or on land. Its full name is the Beaufort wind force scale. History The scale was devised in 1805 by the Irish hydrographer Francis Beaufort ...

. Strong gusts of up to 104mph (170 km/h) were reported, which caused the most extensive damage. The Great Storm of 1987 contained considerably higher wind speeds across every parameter but affected a smaller area of the UK. Both highest recorded sustained wind speeds of 86mph and highest gust of 135mph for example. Sustained periods of high gust speeds were also far higher in 1987. However, during the 1987 storm, many anemometers stopped recording because of power outages, breakages by the excess wind speeds and measurement maxima being exceeded. By 1990, the meteorological community had newer devices that remained independent of external power and could measure higher wind speeds. The general opinion is that wind speeds measured during the Burns' Day Storm provide an accurate picture, but there is a tendency to downplay windspeeds from the 1987 storm because of the patchy data available. In the 1987 storm, it was the counties of Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Essex (i.e. the SE of England) which were worst hit and suffered the most damage. Met Office forecaster of the day, Michael Fish became notoriously infamous by assuring a lady enquirer that "there was not going to be a 'hurricane'".

Forecasting

The Burns' Day Storm of 1990 has been given as an example of when the

Met Office The Meteorological Office, abbreviated as the Met Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and is led by CEO Penelope E ...

"got the prediction right". The model forecast hinged on observations from two ships in the Atlantic near the developing storm the day before it reached the UK. During the day of the storm, the

Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute , nativename_a = , nativename_r = , logo = , logo_width = , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = FS IMG 8907 KNMI.jpg , picture_width = 250px , picture_caption = KNMI headquarters in De Bilt , for ...

(KNMI) increased warnings to force 11 and eventually to hurricane force 12. It conducted research that most of the general public could not understand the severity of the warnings. The storm has led to more awareness and understanding of storminess among the public by the KNMI, which started a teletext page and the introduction of special warnings for extreme weather events in reaction to these findings.

Impacts

Casualties were much higher than those of the Great Storm of 1987 because the storm hit during the daytime. The storm caused extensive damage, with approximately 3 million trees downed,

power Power most often refers to: * Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work" ** Engine power, the power put out by an engine ** Electric power * Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events ** Abusive power Power may a ...

disrupted to over 500,000 homes and severe

flooding A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrolog ...

in England and

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

. The storm cost insurers in the UK £3.37 billion, the UK's most expensive weather event to insurers. Most of the deaths were caused by collapsing buildings or falling debris. In one case in

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

, a class of children was evacuated just minutes before their school building collapsed. The actor

Gorden Kaye Gordon Irving Kaye(7 April 194123 January 2017), known professionally as Gorden Kaye, was an English actor, best known for playing womanising café owner René Artois in the television comedy series Allo 'Allo!''. Early life Kaye was born o ...

was also injured during the storm when a plank of an advertising board was blown through his car's windscreen.

References

External links

On this Day by the BBC
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burns' Day Storm Burns' Day Storm Burns' Day Storm Burns' Day Storm Burns' Day Storm 1990 meteorology 1990 disasters in the United Kingdom Robert Burns Power outages in the United Kingdom January 1990 events in Europe

Storm A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmos ...