Lowest Pressure in August

[xmetman]

I got a little fed up with hearing every BBC weather presenter churn out the phrase “this are of low pressure is very unusual for the time of year” and decided to investigate the truth of the matter. Of course, it all depends on what you term “unusual”, I know personally that as I get older how easy it is to forget past events, and that the low now tracking into Ireland might not be that unusual at all, and that’s when gridded MSLP data and weather statistics drawn from that data come into their own. More information and plotted charts here.

[Richard Dixon]

Using the EURO4 forecast, maybe somewhere in western Ireland might just eke out a 980mb - so 10 980mb events in 70-odd years, a 1 in 7 year event?

Richard

[xmetman]

Probably.

It was easier than I thought to identify highs and lows over the British Isles and the stats I've generated are quite surprising.

[Col]

Interesting that the Fastnet Storm only makes it to no.21. I realise that the correlation between wind speed and absolute minimum pressure is going to be far from exact, or was this storm only really notable for what happened rather than the winds being of exceptional strength for the time of year?

Col

[xmetman]

Apparently it was caused by what the weather magazine called a mesoscale surface jet. Most of the yachts ran into trouble around midnight or in the early hours and earlier than when the minimum pressure occurred. It's hard to be precise because the gridded data is only 6 hourly and the grid is big 2.5x2.5° so far from precise.

[Freddie]

Was it a sting jet? I was camping in North Devon at the time, and judging by the amount of damage on the site it was particularly windy!

[John Hall]

It's interesting that the only two years in which the lowest pressure during the month was higher than 1000mb (though only just in both cases) were 1969 and 1976, two months that otherwise didn't have much in common. Judging by August 1969's mean CET and EWR, it was a fairly average month.

[Richard Dixon]

On Friday, 19 August 2016 20:25:20 UTC+1, Freddie wrote:

Was it a sting jet? I was camping in North Devon at the time, and judging by the amount of damage on the site it was particularly windy!

I wouldn't mind putting money on the fact that Smartie has re-simulated this in the WRF model and can give you an answer...!

Richard