NSWWS

The above is an amber warning issued for Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, Kent and West Sussex for Monday the 22nd of January 2024. It’s a perfect example of how winds in Scotland have to gust in excess of 80 mph before an amber warning is issued there, but only 70 mph in England. Below is the Met OfficeUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s own UKV model for 06 UTCUTC Coordinated Universal Time or UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time (such as UT1) at 0° longitude (at the IERS Reference Meridian as the currently used prime meridian) and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). on Monday morning, the spot values clearly show gusts of 69 kts across NENE North East Scotland and 61 kts across the coast of Sussex.

The impacts on a roof or chimney stack are identical, the last time I checked, the laws of physics are exactly the same in Brighton as they are in Kirkwall, and a 70 mph gust that removes slates off a roof in either place will have the same consequences if it falls on someone’s head. But impact based warnings are weighted in favour of population density, and hence the reason why the 69 kt gust is viewed as less ‘impactful’ in the NE Scotland than the 61 kt gust in Brighton. Completely balmy. Impact based warnings are discriminatory, and not for the right reasons. Bring back threshold based warnings.