Weather… always an item!
December 23, 2008
Thanks to Alan Dickson from Milovaig - a place a couple miles down the road from us - who operates a weather station. While the Metoffice fell asleep or was having a really long tea break, his gear was collecting proper information. On December 19th the wind showed the below graph. From that graph you can clearly see that we had gusts of well over 80mph in the afternoon…
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Hi, some other stations on Skye show lower gusts:
Carbost at 48 mph http://www.carbostweather.co.uk/December2008.htm
Elgol had 54 mph http://www.isleofskyeweather.org.uk/24elgol/wxhistory.php
in case you ever feel paranoid about the MET’s figures
Travelling back from Inverness on Friday 19th December, in a high-sided camper van, we had the scariest gusts ever to contend with. Certainly they were more than 48 or 54mph. We especially felt the gusts at Cluanie, Broadford, Sleat (whilst collecting our dog from Aird), and around Ullinish area. Worse than any slush or snow we had to drive through, And we passed a car many many feet down a bank with emergency services in attendance. Not nice.
How do we know these gusts were above 54mph??? We felt them and nearly left the road several times.
I would also say they were well above 48 or 54mph. At one point during the afternoon you could hardly walk against the wind… sort of “hang against it”, so to say….
I also understand there was a caravan blown into the sea at Milovaig!
There is also a station at Lusa (Broadford) but unfortunately the historical data for December is not available right now. Its an official station, perhaps it was in a good location to capture the wind on the 19th?
http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/SKYE_LUSA/30370.htm
The data I get is pretty extreme, the station is well sited to catch the worst of the wind, and Milovaig sits at the end of the peninsula, almost in the middle of the Little Minch. It is very exposed and probably should not be used as wholly representative of other areas of Skye.
Neist Point/Waterstein used to have an official met office weather station, they closed it down in 2003, apparently its results were too odd to be any use in the forecasting models. Its historical data is here http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/WATERSTEIN/30270.htm.
As a side note to the 19th, it had the highest wind speed (not gust) of the year, and peaked at 84 (max gust was 90). The caravan that was blown over the cliff must have been there for twenty years or so, and had survived the storm in 2004. It was certainly a very windy day!
As far as forecasting is concerned, I have found metcheck provides the most accurate forecast model for north west skye, however you have to set it to Benbecula. Generally the “Isle of Skye” forecast is pretty far off , it uses the data from Lusa which is on the other side of the Cuillin from us, and has a quite a different microclimate, and is about 50 miles away, Benbecula is only 20 miles or so (as the crow flies) Another useful site is XC weather, which gives a good graphic representation of the wind in particular, and clearly demonstrates the different conditions over across the width of the island
http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/FREE/today.asp?zipcode=benbecula
http://www.xcweather.co.uk/
Alan