Cornish Storm Watcher

The south west has essentially been battered by several hurricanes over the past few weeks.  The most recent storm, hitting the coast on Friday afternoon and lasting until the small hours of Saturday morning, hit wind speeds above 80 mph and waves above thirty feet. The upper reaches of the widely used Beaufort scale are: Gale Force 8, Strong Gale Force 9, Storm Force 10 and  Violent Storm 11 for winds up to 73mph and waves over 37 feet.  Hurricane Force 12 is reserved for wind speeds above 74mph, and seas above 46 feet. Penzance Promenade  No wonder Penzance and Newlyn seafront were decimated, because that's what Hurricanes do. A whole layer of the promenade scattered  Although it might have been just a Violent Storm. This graph from the Penzance wave buoy would indicate otherwise, recording a wave over 90 feet.  . Large enough  Even if we assume this peak is an anomaly - the machinery that measures and records these waves has yet...

This next one is just starting to pick up, gusting to 87mph this evening. Massive seas likely tomorrow, and again on Saturday. I can't see a name for this one yet, but it looks like it's got bug eyes. Continuing this post after the Bug Eye storm event now: Overnight the wind howled and downed over 100 trees across Cornwall. Emergency services fielded 300 calls and were too busy clearing main roads to deal with this one which crushed a car in Penzance, so a 78 year old  resident started sawing it up himself. Massive destructive waves hit Penzance and Newlyn and sunk boats at Porthleven when the harbour wall was breached.  One wave was recorded at nearly 75 ft in Mount's Bay. Graph from SurfHog.com The largest waves hit during the night with hundreds of people turning out to watch the show on the Promenade the next morning. The incredibly heavy storm swell damaged Penzance pier, threw wreckage from the promenade all over the road causing police to...