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, it caused widespread damage and hurricane-force winds over a wide area.

Meteorological history

The storm began as a cold front over the Northern Atlantic Ocean on 23 January. By 24 January, it had a minimum central pressure of 992 millibars (29.3 inHg) and began to undergo explosive cyclogenesis, 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 around 16:00. After hitting the United Kingdom, the storm tracked rapidly east towards Denmark and caused major damage and 30 deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium.

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 (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 disrupted to over 500,000 homes and severe flooding in England and West Germany. 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 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 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. This storm has received different ...