4 ms·
As a wertern European, the first time I converted wind speeds from a US hurricane, I thought I fumbled the maths, it was like 100kph/60mph higher than our winte
by nraynaud 3y ago
As a wertern European, the first time I converted wind speeds from a US hurricane, I thought I fumbled the maths, it was like 100kph/60mph higher than our winter storms.
I since learned that the storm scale and the hurricane scale are different, and we simply don't have hurricanes here, we never see real crazy wind speeds and we don't use the hurricane scale at all.
- albrewer 3y agoThe aftermath of a hurricane is like nothing you've ever experienced - there's something deeply unsettling about all the trees in a forest being bent uniformly in one direction, or entire neighborhoods completely erased. 285 km/h sustained winds comes out to roughly 3.8 kpa pressure on all surfaces. So for every 1m^2 of surface area perpendicular to the wind direction, you're getting ~350kgf applied.
- djmips 3y agoIn the Pacific Northwest, we get extra bad wind storms around every 30 years. The storm in 1993 was 60-75 mph and going back to 1921 a storm was 115 mph with gusts to 150 mph. What's it like in Western Europe?
- nraynaud 3y agoI'd say Lothar was a very big recent one, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Lothar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Lothar (albeit the name, cyclones don't develop if the ocean water is less than 26°C, and let me tell you that there was a solid 15-20°C margin in the zone). Germany had some solid gust speeds, but when you look at France, it's not biting that much in the 100mph.
- LorenPechtel 3y agoHurricanes require big patches of warm ocean to feed on--they can leave such areas but they will weaken with time if they don't have warm ocean to feed on. Furthermore, northern-hemisphere hurricanes will in general move northeast, your water is to the west.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoYou get the rare EF3 or EF4 tornado in western Europe that have hurricane wind speeds.