By Philip Eden
September and October are the peak months for a little known complaint, found only among professional weather forecasters, called Meteorologists’ Malady. The main symptom is acute paranoia brought about by the presence on the forecasters’ weather charts, often in the bottom left-hand corner somewhere near Bermuda, of a tropical storm or hurricane.
The illness is especially dangerous when knowledge of the storm’s existence penetrates beyond the portals of the forecast office, and symptoms become particularly severe when a member of the public or – worse – a journalist telephones to ask, "I hear there’s a hurricane on the way; when is it going to hit us?"
It was the prospect of an appointment with the Ryder Cup golf competition in Ireland which finally got journalists interested. Sports reporters were waxing lyrical about rain and rough winds during the practice rounds on Wednesday being caused by "the tail end of Hurricane Gordon" while the storm was still 1000 miles away, and they worried about rain and strong winds wrecking play on Friday and Saturday after the storm had already passed through.
As all Atlantic hurricanes do, Gordon began to lose power as he left the tropics; hurricanes are fed by a combination of warmth and moisture, so they die rapidly when they cross a coastline and they fade away more gradually if they travel across cooler oceanic waters. Having said that, though, the remnants of such a storm often interact with the trailing cold front of a typical Atlantic “lowö, creating a rather more conventional travelling depression. Such a depression will still contain excessive amounts of moisture left over from the hurricane, and may still pack a punch as it passes close to or over the British Isles. Such was the case with ex-Gordon on Thursday evening and night. Winds gusted to 50-60kn in Cornwall, Pembrokeshire and Ireland, and some western parts of the Irish Republic collected over 60mm of rain. But the really bad weather lasted only a few hours.
This transformation of a hurricane into a temperate-latitude depression is not rare. In most years it happens several times between August and November, and the associated bad weather, although unpleasant, passes by with no more than the usual grumbles.
© Philip Eden