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. It is one of the strongest

European windstorm European windstorms are powerful extratropical cyclones which form as cyclone, 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 ...

s on record and caused many fatalities in the UK and Europe. This storm has received different names, as there was no official list of such events in Europe at the time. Starting on Burns Day, the birthday of the Scottish poet

Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the List of national poets, national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the be ...

, it caused widespread damage and

hurricane A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system with a low-pressure area, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depending on its ...

-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 (meteorology), trough of Low-pressure area, low pressure. It often forms behind an extratropica ...

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 eve ...

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

Ayrshire Ayrshire (, ) is a Counties of Scotland, historic county and registration county, in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. The lieutenancy areas of Scotland, lieutenancy area of Ayrshire and Arran covers the entirety ...

in Scotland. The lowest pressure of was estimated near

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

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

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

causing major damage and a further 30 deaths in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

and

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

Winds

The strongest sustained winds recorded were between , 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. It was devised in 1805 by Francis Beaufort a hydrographer in the Royal Navy. It ...

. Strong gusts of up to 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 86 mph and highest gust of 135 mph, 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. A Met Office forecaster the previous day, Michael Fish, notoriously said he had assured 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 Met Office, until November 2000 officially the Meteorological Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and ...

"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 (KNMI) increased warnings to force 11 and eventually to hurricane force 12. It conducted research that showed 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. There were 47 deaths in the UK, most caused by collapsing buildings or falling debris. A schoolgirl was killed by a falling tree at her school in

Presales Presales is a process or a set of activities/sales normally carried out before a customer is acquired, though sometimes presales also extends into the period the product or service is delivered to the customer. There are many job titles assoc ...

, in Ware, Hertfordshire, and a class of children in

Sussex Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...

was evacuated just minutes before their school building collapsed. The actor Gorden Kaye was injured during the storm when a plank of an advertising board was blown through his car's windscreen, and Kaye required emergency brain surgery to recover. The storm caused extensive damage, with approximately 3 million trees downed, power disrupted to over 500,000 homes and severe flooding in England and

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

. The storm cost insurers in the UK£3.37 billion, the UK's most expensive weather event to insurers.

Highest wind gust per country

References

External links

On this Day by the BBC
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burns' Day Storm

Burns' Day Storm 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. It is one of the strongest European windstorms on record and caused many fatalities in the ...

1990 meteorology 1990 disasters in the United Kingdom Robert Burns Power outages in the United Kingdom January 1990 in Europe

Storm A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an astronomical body. It may be marked by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning (a thunderstor ...

January 1990 in France 1990 in Belgium 1990 in Denmark 1990 in the Netherlands 1990 disasters in France