Hot on the heels of Storm Antoni earlier this month, the Met Office in Exeter has just issued a press release about the imminent arrival of another mid-summer named storm:
Met Éireann have named Storm Betty as a low-pressure system which is also triggering Met Office warnings…
A Met Office yellow warning for wind covers coastal areas of western Wales, eastern Northern Ireland and parts of northwest England and southwest Scotland. Rain warnings have also been issued from late Friday and into Saturday for Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland.
The worst effects of Storm Betty will be felt further north, but plenty more rain is forecast for West Devon over the coming hours and days:
Note also the 51 mph wind gusts forecast for Okehampton at 10 PM tonight:
This has all the makings of yet another “sewage in the sea” event.
Here are some moving pictures of Storm Betty’s progress from the Met Office:
Here is the Met Office weather model’s forecast of the maximum wind gust speed (in km/h!) until noon tomorrow:
Dartmoor gets as high as 90 km/h (56 mph), and West Cornwall gusts are as high as 100 km/h (62 mph).
Here too is the UK forecast accumulated rainfall by noon tomorrow:
A heavier band of rain has reached West Devon, and the winds from Storm Betty are picking up now:
Sadly, as predicted earlier this afternoon, a sea of orange sewage pollution alerts are spreading across South West Water’s “Water Fit Live” map:
At least it hasn’t reached Bude and Widemouth. Yet?
[Update – August 19th]The orange tide of sewage pollution didn’t reach Widemouth Bay yesterday:
However as you can see it did reach many other places! In addition Polurrian Cove in Cornwall joined Lynmouth on the list of South West Water’s non functional combined sewer overflow monitors:
Another unfortunate side effect of Storm Betty’s strong winds are power cuts. Ireland suffered worse than South West England in that respect. However yesterday evening there were power outages in Bideford:
as well as Broadwoodwidger:
and just over the border in Gunnislake:
To be continued…
