Storm Ciara battering British Isles

[Ray Proudfoot 8,924]

Storm Ciara (named by Irish Met Office) now battering the British Isles, Ireland and NW Europe. This is one of the largest storms to hit us for many years with an amber weather warning covering the whole of England and Wales - a rare occurence.

Whilst pressure will not break any records my weather station near Manchester Airport recorded a 65mph  gust as a squall line passed through at 11:25. The Airport recorded 86mph with many go-arounds and diverts.

The attached image shows the UK Met Office rainfall radar at 11:25 as the worst of it passed through my area - shown by the black icon).

Edited February 9, 2020 by Ray Proudfoot

[GHD 21]

But lucky for some:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51433720

 

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,924]

2 minutes ago, GHD said:

But lucky for some:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-51433720

Still 500mph slower than Concorde! But seat prices give excellent value for money! 😁

[Chock 17,769]

We actually had some diverts to Manchester in spite of the poor weather there, because it was a bit worse at Leeds at the time, but apparently a SAS flight this morning (which landed before my shift started) got all the way to Manchester but then flew back to Scandinavia because it couldn't land! I think an A380 diverted into Manchester too. BA did cancel some of today's scheduled flights into Manchester, but they made that decision yesterday. Some people told me that apparently there was an ATR 72 on which the nose wheel was lifting because of the wind, which I sure was fun to see.

At about six PM today we switched to doing pushbacks using hand signals instead of using headsets as we normally do (that's because of the risk to the headset person from any lightning strikes which might hit the aircraft). And whilst I was working near the runway, there were some, shall we say 'entertaining' landings taking place.

That said, I didn't think the weather was too bad today. I didn't even bother putting my waterproof gear on in spite of it all and I didn't really get wet or cold. Ironically enough, I had more weather issues with aircraft yesterday than today, most notably an Embraer 145, on which we stopped the number one engine start up sequence (number two was already started up okay) because the tailwind blowing up the number one engine's tailpipe was making the engine smoke a lot and potentially have a problematic start, so the decision was made to crank the engine up after it had taxied to a position where the wind would be coming from the front.

Since I'm now off work for five days, I couldn't care less if the weather is awful at Manchester tomorrow though!

[Mace 1,902]

Did you have thunder and lightning?  As in CB's?

You don't get tornados I assume, since you don't usually have the cold dry continental air popping through the damp moist air.

[188AHC 2,138]

Chock, good to have your on site info. Thanks. 

[Chock 17,769]

Earlier in the day there was some pretty fierce lightning and there was a warning issued that the UK was at risk of tornadoes, but that warning did not come from the Met Office, it came from the chief meteorologist at the Essex Weather Centre. So yes, we can get tornadoes and hurricanes, but it is a very rare occurrence. We are expected to get winds of up to 100 mph in coastal areas.

Gusts were apparently up to 45 knots at Manchester Airport (where I work) but since these were coming from the south west, there was very little crosswind component, in fact the wind was pretty much straight down the runways and fairly steady, which are on a heading of 235 degrees magnetic, so aircraft were not having much difficulty landing, although they were coming in fast with minimal flap settings to overcome the potential dangers from gusts dropping off and most of them were using a lot of reverse thrust rather than brakes because the runways were pretty wet.

In view of the weather, Flybe cancelled their flights (they fly mostly Dash 8 Q400s plus a few Embraer 190s). They apparently sent their ramp guys home. But some small aeroplanes were making it in and out just fine, for example,  Aer Lingus were flying their ATR-72s in and out no problem and they are not the ones equipped with the fancy nose radar and HGS either (like the ones Aurigny use) although there weren't many takers for those flights and there was an Aurigny ATR-72 parked up for the night on Stand 7, which doesn't normally occur, so I guess it must be rough in the Channel Islands!

I helped out on one of those Aer Lingus ATR flights this afternoon (because I wanted something to do and would rather do something than sit about). There were literally three bags loaded into the front hold of that ATR and that was it. Later I worked on an Aer Lingus A320 and similarly, that only had one ULD come off it and none went back on, all the bags (probably about 30) went into the rear bulk hold. It was a similar story on a Vueling A320 I worked on too, so clearly a lot of people were either choosing not to fly or perhaps could not make it to the airport to do so.

You might be interested to know that in such conditions we don't put any steps on the rear of aeroplanes (any winds over 35 knots and the aircraft tail sways too much) and we 'storm chock' the aeroplanes too - that's where you put 12 chocks on things like the A320 and the 737 (two on every wheel), whereas normally you use six in total but can get away with using four most of the time, so finding chocks at Manchester today was like trying to find rocking horse sh** lol. In such situations, you end up being forced to use all the stupidly big (and very heavy) chocks which nobody likes using, because everyone has already used all the nice smaller ones which are easy to carry. All the different airlines have their own weird rules about which wheels you are supposed to chock, for example in normal conditions, KLM want you to chock one of the nose wheels and the outer starboard main wheel, Air France want you to put four on the two nose wheels and two on the inner port main, BA want two on the nose and two on the inner port main, Loganair want four on the nose and none on the mains. It's very bizarre all the silly rules like this which you have to remember, as if you haven't got enough to do!

Not putting steps on the tail affects fueling too and indeed some other stuff (there are lots of rules about that for obvious reasons). For example, normally you have to keep rear steps on the plane as well as the air bridge when fueling so that if there is an incident you can evacuate the passengers from two exits. On things like the ATR-72, normally you would fuel the plane before the passengers board, but occasionally passengers board when there is fueling going on. If that happens, you are not allowed to block the rear exit or service door since these would be needed for a speedy evacuation, which means you can't load bags or cargo in the rear hold whilst fueling is going on and you also have to have someone on a headset who watches the fueler so that if there is a problem, that person on the headset can immediately inform the crew in case an evacuation is advisable. You also have to have one cabin crew person for every fifty passengers on board.

On something like a Boeing 737-900, there is a big risk of it tipping on its tail during unloading because most of the bags and cargo is usually in the front hold. With no steps on the rear, passengers can only exit from the front via the jet bridge or air stairs (but typically only Ryanair use those). So that means people block the aisle, as a result of that, the rearmost passengers typically stay seated and wait for a bit. This means if you start unloading the front and take weight in front of the wing off the plane, the plane starts tipping up because of all the people sat in the rear whilst the front passengers are disembarking. You can tell if this tail tipping is occurring because the anti-torque scissors link on the back of the nose gear leg starts extending. If you see that, you have to stop unloading the front immediately so the weight stays on board, and of course in a high wind, there is always the possibility that a gust could help the thing to tip onto its tail!

Edited February 10, 2020 by Chock

[spilok 1,132]

Wow...what a ride today.  This morning, I flew from Liverpool to Shannon and it was fearsome rain, wind and unbelievable turbulence.   Did it again this evening and Liverpool was pretty calm but as I got to Dublin (enroute to Shannon), it all started again with a fury.  That is some stormy weather!

Stan

[Ray Proudfoot 8,924]

@Chock, I don't know what time you started your shift but the worst weather arrived at 11:20 and last for around 10 minutes when a squall line passed through. See my image in first post. Max gust at EGCC was 85mph (so around 78kts) during that squall. Strong enough to make 4th place on the BBC's windiest places yesterday.

Another squall crossed the area around 17:00 with lightning and thunder. Less strong gusts this time. Rain total for the day was 0.90" so wet but nothing exceptional unlike others areas like Yorkshire.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,924]

7 hours ago, Mace said:

Did you have thunder and lightning?  As in CB's?

You don't get tornados I assume, since you don't usually have the cold dry continental air popping through the damp moist air.

No tornadoes yesterday but it might surprise you that there are more observed tornadoes in the UK than the US. It's simply down to population density so no tornado (most of which are tiny) goes unnoticed here whereas they could do in the US with its huge land mass.

[Chock 17,769]

We do have these Tornadoes too... Or at least we did have until they were retired last year:

 

[Jude Bradley 659]

I really must be an aeroplane geek, if I can tell a go-around just from the noise. I checked on Flightaware just to confirm what I thought and yep, an Ryanair 737 did a go-around over my block.  RWY 16 was in use in Dublin due to the heavy winds.

 

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipM_ngxALBeheLiZ5EH5jwKV8Bqvm0_dVgHovgNz

Edited February 10, 2020 by Jude Bradley