The same low-pressure system that brought historic snowfall to the U.S. Gulf Coast early this week intensified into an extremely powerful extratropical cyclone in the North Atlantic, designated Storm Éowyn under Europe’s international system for naming such storms. Éowyn barreled into Ireland and the northern United Kingdom on Friday, January 24, bringing heavy wind damage, a destructive storm surge, and widespread power outages.
The ferocious windstorm brought the highest sustained winds and the highest wind gust ever recorded in Ireland. Sustained winds of 135 km/hr (84 mph) gusting to 183 km/hr (114 mph) were reported between 4 and 5 a.m. local time at Mace Head on Ireland’s central west coast. According to the Irish weather service, met.ie, the nation’s previous highest winds were sustained at 81 mph (131 km/hr), gusting to 113 mph (182 km/hr), a record set in Limerick in 1945.
⚠️🌬️ L’animation satellite montre la tempête #Eowyn très esthétique et son centre très creux (939 hPa), provoquant des #vents jusqu’à 184 km/h, soit le nouveau record absolu pour l’Irlande (précédent de 182 à Limerick en 1945). pic.twitter.com/MXodiMygKo
— La Chaîne Météo (@lachainemeteo) January 24, 2025
The highest gust record of 182 km/h set in 1945 at Foynes Co. Limerick has provisionally been broken during #StormÉowyn pic.twitter.com/9loiOz96l4
— Met Éireann (@MetEireann) January 24, 2025
The winds at the Mace Head Atmospheric Research Station were measured at a standard observing height of 10 meters (about 33 feet), on a tower located right at the edge of the ocean. That tower was only installed in 2003, so it is possible that the station would have measured even stronger winds during the 1945 storm.
Sustained 10-minute winds of 84 mph are characteristic of a strong Cat 1 or weak Cat 2 hurricane. The damage being reported from Ireland and the U.K. is indeed characteristic of a hurricane, and Storm Èowyn may well end up being Earth’s second billion-dollar weather disaster of 2025, along with the Los Angeles fires. At the height of the storm, power was knocked out for at least 725,000 customers in Ireland — close to 30% of the nation’s customers — as well as nearly 100,000 customers in Northern Ireland and 20,000 in Scotland, according to the Associated Press.
Galway Aquarium in Ireland floods in storm surge caused by #StormEowyn (time-lapse)
📹 Matt Hawkins, Aquarium Manager pic.twitter.com/Gf4vkQfA0k
— Volcaholic 🌋 (@volcaholic1) January 24, 2025
Waves up to 66 feet (20.1 meters) and low pressure of 939 mb
A central pressure of 939 mb (hPa) was measured at the M4 buoy off the northwest coast of Ireland as the center of Èowyn passed overhead, and some truly enormous waves were measured at the M3 buoy off the southwest coast: a peak significant wave height of 41 feet (12.6 meters) and a peak wave height of 66 feet (20.1 meters).
A follower has reported a @metoffice weather buoy has washed up on reenroe beach Ballinskelligs in Kerry today after #StormÉowyn
ODAS 62 seems to be print on it, anyone know where it has been deployed? Thanks to Roisin for photo. pic.twitter.com/NAKu7JT0sA— Carlow Weather (@CarlowWeather) January 24, 2025
The Aran Islands (pop. 1,300) located about 20 km (12 miles) west of the coast of Ireland received the brunt of the storm. A team of Notre Dame scientists led by Andrew Kennedy has installed accelerometers in over 30 boulders located on oceanside cliffs in the islands in order to study the impact of large waves on the coast. In an email, Kennedy told me he expected Storm Éowyn’s waves would be a “big mover” of the boulders, but real-time data was not available.
Climate change and European windstorms: high uncertainty
We can expect climate change to cause notable changes to nearly all types of storms in the future since significant alterations to oceanic heat and atmospheric circulation patterns are underway. In particular, it is possible that record-warm ocean waters currently in place over the North Atlantic could have injected extra energy into Èowyn, increasing its winds.
However, climate-linked changes in the behavior of wintertime extratropical cyclones like Storm Èowyn over the Atlantic have been tough to separate out from natural variability. The latest IPCC climate report said there was “limited evidence” that such changes had been observed. That Sixth Assessment Report, published in 2021, gave “low confidence” to the idea that “the observed intensity of extreme winds is becoming less severe in the low to mid-latitudes, while becoming more severe in high latitudes poleward of 60 degrees.” They predicted that “by the end of the century … the number of extratropical cyclones associated with extreme winds will significantly decrease in the mid- and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere in winter, with the projected decrease being larger over the Atlantic, while it will significantly increase irrespective of the season in the Southern Hemisphere.”
The most damaging windstorms may tend to shift toward northern Europe, including the British Isles, and away from southern Europe as the climate warms and the favored jet stream patterns shift north. A 2024 modeling study, “Changes in the North Atlantic Oscillation over the 20th Century,” concluded: “On average, we find the British Isles, Western Europe, and Scandinavia to be at risk of increased winter windstorm damage under future climate conditions, with the median of the multi-model ensemble projecting increases in average annual damage of +16 %, +17 %, and +13 %, respectively. We find a moderate decrease in the damage in Central Europe (−3 %) and more marked decreases in the Iberian Peninsula (−28 %), the Mediterranean (−15 %), and Eastern European (−35 %) regions.”
From the record Gulf Coast snows to Storm Èowyn
The weather pattern that led to Èowyn can be traced back to a sharp upper-level disturbance and weak surface low that teamed up with cold, dry surface air to produce the blockbuster snowstorm that swept across the upper U.S. Gulf Coast on Tuesday, January 21. That disturbance joined the broader polar jet stream by midweek over the northwest Atlantic, then morphed into a powerhouse upper low in tandem with the rapid strengthening of the accompanying surface low as both approached Ireland on Thursday, January 23. Figure 2 shows the four-day evolution as it played out in surface weather features (highs, lows, and precipitation).
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