6 December 2013, 10:45
This was the worst storm in 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, 2, …well, make that 0.1 years.
Where I live the storm ended yesterday evening. One news media outlet (NDR radio) summed it nicely earlier this morning, saying that the storm “was worse than expected”, but then just two sentences later the report said “the damage was far less than expected”. This is like saying the day was hotter than they thought it would be, but that the thermometer rose less than expected.
All in all, Xaver was just a normal big North Sea storm of the type seen dozens of times already. If the hype served a purpose, it was that people were extra careful and so the loss of life was practically near zero.
20:45:
Where I live the wind has died down considerably. I went for a walk and there really wasn’t that much wind at all. Maybe it’s just a calm spell. The evening news have hyped it up as much as they could and seem to be hoping for a storm surge to flood Hamburg early in the morning. No deaths to report yet. Overall, it’s just another typical winter storm.
Latest wind gusts (km/hr) so far at some locations:
– Where I live: 78
– Helgoland (North Sea island): 128
– Sylt (North Sea island): 128
– Emden: 92
– Hamburg: 89
– Bremen: 89
– Rostock: 83
www.thelocal.de/winter-storm-swirls-to-german-coast
www.thelocal.se/storm-weeps-into-southern-sweden
18:05
Some exaggerations going on in the media. For example, the northern port city of Kiel was reported (by Bild) to have seen a wind gust of 137 kph. but the weather station shows only 76 kph!
Winds appear to have peaked. In places like Hamburg and Bremen they are nowhere near reaching the forecast highs of up to 140 km/hr. Good news: so far no reported deaths, and only two injured. And no mention that the storm is caused by “climate change”. Obviously the PIK has not issued any statements to the press up to now.
Latest wind gusts (km/hr) so far at some locations:
– Where I live: 93
– Helgoland (North Sea island): 154
– Sylt (North Sea island): 135
– Emden: 93
– Hamburg: 85
– Bremen: 85
– Rostock: 90
15:20
Meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann reports gusts of 154 km/hr in Helgoland, but he doesn’t expect any record wind speeds to be recorded. Matters not much better in the UK: www.bbc.co.uk/weather.
Already lots of media hyping it up as if Xaver were the storm of the century. But Kachelmann tweets: “And just for the record: Xaver is not and never will be the worst storm in decades.”
Top wind gusts (km /hr) so far at some locations:
Where I live: 85
Helgoland (North Sea island): 154
Sylt (North Sea island): 130
Emden: 81
Hamburg: 85
Bremen: 85
Rostock: 74
Keep in mind these are wind gusts, and not sustained wind speeds.
14:00
This morning at 8:30 am all was calm. But by mid morning the winds started acting up by mid morning. Now we are getting gusts over 70 km/hr and mixture of rain and ice.
The peak of the storm is expected to hit Hamburg by 4 pm. So far no reports of deaths or injuries. Also no comments from the PIK house of horrors or from Mojib Latif.
Top wind gusts so far:
Where I live: 70 km/hr
Helgoland (North Sea island): 115 km/hr
Sylt (North Sea island): 116 km/hr
Emden: 77 km/hr
Hamburg: 80 km/hr
Bremen: 40 km/hr
Rostock: 65 km/hr
Expect the numbers to go up in the next hours.
Stay safe.
Sylt cops a lot of weather.
Reminder 🙂
Any news on the ‘daffymills’?
German journos say, no worry, they switch into safe position by themselves.
We’ll see in two days how well they coped.
Watched a BBC reporter on a beach in NE england. All the windmills out to sea were stationary. Useless
One hour ago in Dortmund, there was a thunderstorm with snowfall
Here in Rostock at 20:45 it is very windy but it seems no worse than earlier. Some trees have gone down but it does not seem as bad as was predicted. We’ll see how it develops…
Had you been a resident of Netherlands back in the 1950s, as was my wife, then you could say with conviction “seen it all before”. But it’s “London to a brick” we’ll have the CO2 catastrophists once again screaming “the end is nigh”.