Development & Analysis Of A UK Storm Indicator (part 7)

Today I start turning the handle on daily wind speed data as gathered by 26 Irish weather stations since WWII.

OK, so I’ve got two cleaned and prepped data files ready to fry that span the period October 1939 – August 2021. One of these contains records of daily mean wind speed in units of metres per second; the other contains records of daily maximum wind speed attained (a.k.a. gust speed) in the same metric units. Please have your trusty hand-held calculators at the ready to convert these unfamiliar beasts to the familiar imperial measures of mph.

NOTE: A gale force wind is defined as having a speed between 34 and 47 knots (17.5 – 24.2 m/s). On the Beaufort scale gale force winds correspond to wind forces 8 and 9, with force 8 ranging from 34 to 40 knots (17.5 – 20.6 m/s), and force 9 ranging from 41 to 47 knots (21.1 – 24.2 m/s). Storm Force 10 on the Beaufort scale corresponds to winds with a speed ranging from 48 to 55 knots (24.7 - 28.3 m/s).

Just to convince you that we are dealing with the real deal here I’m going to produce a summary table of maximum gust speeds in descending order of v…