Met Office in the doghouse. Too busy hyping up warmer than normal Christmas weather in parts of England and Wales perhaps, in support of their woeful greenhouse gas obsessions, while snow was blocking the main road into and out of northern Scotland and trees were toppling onto power lines?
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The Met Office has pledged to review its weather alerts after people in Scotland claimed they were blindsided by the ferocity of Storm Gerrit, says The Telegraph.
Yellow warnings issued by the UK’s weather service had suggested a low chance of severe impacts from the storm, which has battered much of the country with 80mph winds, blizzards and heavy rain.
In the wake of travel chaos caused by snow, flooding and fallen trees, the Met Office has been challenged over whether amber alerts should have been issued.
David Duguid, the Conservative MP for Banff and Buchan, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “The effect of the weather in north-east Scotland in last 24 hours has felt far more serious than ‘yellow’. Many of my constituents asking why this wasn’t amber.”
People in Fort Augustus, in the Highlands, echoed the concerns after the area was hit by heavy winds, causing power cuts and road closures because of fallen trees.
. . .
Workers had faced 80mph winds
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said power had been restored to more than 40,000 customers but about 1,500 properties would be without electricity until Friday. The power company said its workers had faced 80mph winds in some coastal areas and some had been trapped for hours on the A9 which was closed at Drumochter in the Highlands due to snow.
Full article here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
The boy who yelled WOLF!
Not the more usual Manchester drizzle…
Telegraph: Supercells occur when strong winds in the atmosphere cause stormy weather to start rolling, and then tip up the rolling storm, tilting it until it is spinning vertically.
Storm Gerrit: ‘Supercell thunderstorm’ touches down as travel misery continues
28 December 2023
Today’s headlines:
A provisionally categorised T5 ‘intense’ tornado damaged houses in Greater Manchester last night.
Around 16,000 homes in Scotland were left without power.
Online planespotter Big Jet TV made a comeback with videos of perilous landings.
Ferry crossings were cancelled across the UK.
Two incidents of people being struck by trains caused disruption to London Paddington services in the morning and all routes to and from London Euston to be suspended in the afternoon.
A ‘supercell thunderstorm’ of rotating wind, lightning and hail made landfall.
A Scottish Conservative MP and local residents questioned the lack of an amber weather warning.
The Liberal Democrats urged Rishi Sunak to hold Cobra meeting on Storm Gerrit.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/28/storm-gerrit-latest-weather-tornado-manchester-delays-live/
I don’t have much time for the MO, but seriously! It was low probability, not zero. But it happened, which happens. Are these whiners not aware weather forecasts aren’t very good?
Anyone wishing for a return to 19th century levels of CO2, on the basis of getting better or more stable weather, should read this…
WRITTEN BY ROGER PIELKE JR. ON DEC 27, 2023.
Was The ‘Preindustrial Period’ Of 1850-1900 An Era Of Perfect Climate?
This cursory overview of various events of the 1870s indicates that the notion that the period 1850 to 1900 was somehow safer or less extreme in terms of climate extremes and impacts is simply false.
If the weather gods offered me the opportunity to replay over the next decade the weather and climate of the 1870s instead of the uncertain future before us, I’d take the uncertain future for sure.
The 1870s were one of the most extreme climatic decades in modern human history.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/was-the-preindustrial-period-of-1850-1900-an-era-of-perfect-climate/