Storm rating in the nineties

Document description

This paper is based primarily on a report on "Storm Severity over Britain" written for Commercial Union by Dr J.P. Palutikof and A.R. Skellern [11] of the Climatic Research Unit of the School of Environmental Sciences of the University of East Anglia. This report, which will be referred to as the "UEA" report from now on, examined the frequency and severity of wind storms from 1920 to 1990 in order to place the events of 1987 and 1990 in their long term context. The researchers identified 47 storms, classed as severe, during this period. Each of these storms is described in the report and the maximum gust speeds and duration, as well as the size of area affected, are given. The report also has a map for each storm showing the areas where gust speeds exceeded 60 and 80 knots. The Commercial Union (CO) agreed to release this report to the Working Party and also supplied a sample of its own exposure and loss data from the 1987 and both the 1990 storms for analysis. The CU has recently made copies of the UEA report available to other interested parties and the authors hope to publish work related to this study in the near future. The Working Party also obtained data from the ABI Household Risks Statistics Panel on the January 1990 and October 1987 storms [1]. These reports were confidential to the contributing Panel members and we are particularly grateful to the Panel, and to Brian Hudson the ABI Chief Statistician, for agreeing to release these to the Working Party.