New Record Wind Gust for Borth and Ynyslas
The forecast was correct and we did indeed beat our previous record wind gust here on Wednesday.
The forecasting site that I use and that has always been the most accurate for me is WindGuru and it was forecasting that the wind would start really building at 1:30pm on Wednesday and peak at a maximum at between 3 and 6pm with gusts of up to 70 knots. Our previous windiest day wasn’t that long ago, with a gust of 62.6 knots (that’s just over 72mph) recorded on December 21st 2013.
Weather Station Screen Shot
With forecasts of up to 70 knots it looked as though we might actually beat that again already. I’ve been recording the weather here at the Borth and Ynyslas Weather Station since 2005 when I first installed the weather station on a telegraph pole in the back garden. The data from it is uploaded on every minute (assuming of course that we have Internet connection and power at the time!) and is presented on the weather station pages my Forces-of-Nature website. I publish it there as the site and weather station itself was initially set up for windsurfers and kite-surfers trailing to the area so that they could get an idea of what the weather and particularly the wind was actually doing. The site display the latest up to the minute weather data in the form of temperatures, humidity, barometric pressures, wind speed, gust speed, wind direction and rainfall, along with trends over the past few hours and 24 hours. There are also pages dedicated to the wind, temperature and pressure which have more detailed information on each of these parameters, such as trends, daily maximums and minimums, monthly maximums and minimum’s etc etc. There is also a page dedicated to all time records, along with various pages of graphs and even historic data for every single day of the year since records began back in 2005 which shows the averages and extremes for each day.
I do charge a £20 annual fee for access to the data simply because it costs me so much to keep it running. I don’t have many subscribers though so if anyone else would like to subscribe that would help secure it’s future of a while longer. Not only are there costs associated with the running of the weather station 24/7 such as the electricity and broadband charges, but things are always breaking on it and need fixing, batteries need replacing all of the time, the computer needs replacing from time to time and there is a constant stream of things that need doing to keep it all running as smoothly as possible. I have thought about making the info freely available and trying to cover the costs through online advertising but would really need one or two sponsors to pay a guaranteed amount that covers at least the amount I make from the few subscribers I already have before doing that. I’ve never really asked anyone to sponsor it though so for now it’s still a £20 subscription to access the data. Please sign up if you have an interest in the weather here – I like running the weather station and like seeing the stats myself so would like to keep it running as long as I can.
Anyway, back to Wednesday and the forecasts from Windguru were spot on. The wind starting howling at around 1:30pm and was soon gusting to over 50 knots. Things were becoming mobile in the garden and it the wind was increasing all of the time and a Red Severe Weather Warning was announced by the Met Office.. Trees were coming down in Aberystwyth and elsewhere and staff at the university were sent home. Anna collected Morgan from school amid traffic chaos and made it home just as a huge gust hit. The biggest gust of the day in fact that topped out at 69.6 knots (that’s 80.1mph or 128.9km/h). In less mathematical terms that’s “Hurricane Force 12” on the Beaufort Scale or “blowin’ an absolute hoolie!“.
That gust hit at 3:42pm and at 3:48 the power went off. Don’t worry though the weather station has battery backup so was still recording the data, it was just unable to upload it to the Internet.
The power stayed out all night and all of the following day too, but we coped OK here. It’s still a little dodgy at the moment and has been on and off all night. At least some of it has as a bank of switches keeps tripping on our main circuit board. It seems OK at the moment but the wind has died down completely at the moment so if its a problem with the lines outside it might have stabilised. The wind is due to return as another storm hits this afternoon though so we shall have to see how well the electricity fares then. Fingers crossed it will all be OK. It does also look as though the storm today may be the last of the recent succession with the weather calming down considerably afterwards.
