West Cornwall, 2nd gale of the Spring beating anything during Winter

[Graham Easterling]

During winter the strongest gust I recorded here in Penzance was just 44mph on 12th January, an exceptionally quiet winter.

Then finally we got a real gale on 31st March with a gust of 49mph, and >90mph at Gwennap Head.

Today even stronger here at my sheltered site in Penzance, 52mph gust around 11am during a violent shower when there was sleet, and the temperature plummeted. It's a seriously wild day.

This is Sennen approaching low tide.

It's smallish tides at the moment and the sea is still surging into the valley at Vallendreath, higher than it should have been at high tide @ 09:15!! (Associated with the surges associated with the big wave sets.)

April is normally such a quiet dry month here, dry partly because of the low sea temperature & the fact that much of the rainfall is of the convectional inland type.

Recent gust of 75mph at John Chappell's site near Land End.

Like the 31st March gale, near neap tides, so it can be exciting without any real issues from overtopping. Also, like the last gale, well forecast.

Graham

Penzance

[Graham Easterling]

Wave height off Lands End at Sevenstones

Fairly impressive for the depths of winter.

Graham

Penzance

[Ashley haworth-roberts]

Both storms given names by the French rather than the Met Office or Met Eireann - Mathis and Noa. From the charts I've seen Brittany and Normandy might not get any stronger wind gusts than Cornwall and Devon.

[Graham Easterling]

There's been comments on the local Kernow weather group about the fact that the worst weather here tends not be be associated with MetO named storms, but normally French ones. 

This was Sevenstone's lighthouse, 2 miles off Lands End. The light is 35m AMSL

Clearly, in a severe gale visibility is moderate or poor anywhere near the windward coast. 

Grumpy old man mode

It really irks me that the MetO visibility forecast has been excellent. When I've previously queried it with them they justify it by saying salt spray is not included in the forecast, as if that makes it right when they must know it's rubbish. I mean, why not exclude water droplets. It can't be that hard to forecast areas likely to be affected based on the predicted wind speed, direction & sea state. In this case virtually the whole of Cornwall was affected.

Graham 

Penzance

[Ashley haworth-roberts]

I've just seen this from further north:

https://twitter.com/DerekTheWeather/status/1646157604354244609?cxt=HHwWgoC-vdLnqdgtAAAA

[Len W]

Met Office did not raise the storm above yellow impact so did not bother naming it.

Not much impact? Try telling that to the airlines, pilots and passengers  flying into Heathrow and elsewhere who had to abort landings and were forced to divert to  Edinburgh, Manchester, Stansted etc.

Len

Wembury

[Ashley haworth-roberts]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-cornwall-65262392