Many of us will remember that epic day @ West Kirby January 18th 2007 when Euro Storm Kyrill tracked across the northern UK and on into Europe delivering winds in excess of 100 knots on its southern flank, leaving wide spread damage in its wake.
Many hard core speedsurfers gathered @ West Kirby that day to face one of the toughest challanges that mother nature conjures up from time to time, Speedsurfing the "weather bomb".
The morning of Jan 18 2007 saw winds peaking at West Kirby @ over 80kts lasting into the early afternoon. The gathered crew sitting it it out, with the speed course blown out with hurricane force winds tearing the top off the lake and delivering it several hundred metres downstream into whatever obstacle dared to stand in its way.
During the afternoon the winds abated to storm force 10, providing an opportunity for the crew to set sail and tame the beast of beasts.
50 knots was still unchartered territory for Speedsurfers back then. But one man who dared to believe came oh so close to breaking that epic milestone - Martin Van Meurs the legend that he is!
Martin's session log is linked below. Sadly the "view ranking of the day" delivers "no data found" which is a shame as many guys braved the storm and hit the water that day, a true testament to the courage and skill of the speedsurfer in "riding the wild storm"
If memory serves me correct Martin peak 1 sec speed was 49.7 knots!
https://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/default.aspx?mnu=user&val=14163&uid=77
So 11 years on we arrive at Jan 18 2018.
Those of you who know me .. I spent many a year Stormtracking for the UK Speed Scene with the primary objective of avoiding the dreaded "skunking" - arriving at speed spot based on a decent forecast with the wind never materialising :(
On the radar we have a "weather bomb" on the horizon, tracking in towards the UK Wednesday , mid atlantic @ 985mb. Early Thursday morning it will cut a track across the UK (Scotland) to be located just east of Scotland in the North Sea Thursday noon @ 955mb (ECMWF) , thats' a good 10mb deeper than Storm Kyrill 11 years ago to the date.
One to keep a close eye on ... as all models at present (GFS, ECMWF, WRF, NAVGEM are pretty much all in agreeement. The outlier here being the MetOffice, which is unusual , as the MetOffice is usualy close to the ECMWF forecast. I'd hazard a guess that this "potential" Storm will be named Fionn (F-yunn)
Keep a weather eye on horizon :)
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