"danny\(West Kent\)" wrote
in :

It definately was a 1 in 250... a real freak, and on another level to
1990, 'but' like I said, only in such a small area... extremel local
(Kent, Sussex). Other areas it was just a normal gale\storm, whatever.

I suppose it's hard to put a return period on these events as they're so few
and far between (but maybe not so over the Atlantic). I feel that the
1987/1999 storms have a 6-12 period of really intense windspeeds, and for
the 1987 storm, this coincided with the path over the UK. For "Lothar" it
seemed to coincide with the passage over Paris.

Conversely, October 30th 2000 was an interesting example of a near miss -
strong winds gusting 80mph were felt in Lincolnshire just as this 6-12
hour period of the strongest winds developed. I can't imagine what would
have happened if the path of the strongest winds occurred 6-12 hours earlier
across the Midlands. A North Sea oil rig measured sustained hurricane force
winds (74mph) as the system passed over it.

Cheers
Richard