"Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote:

Yes, Hubert Lamb does this in Historic Storms of the
North Sea, British Isles and Northwest Europe, published
by CUP, 1991. He discusses different kinds of grading,
from the objective
windspeed^3 * Area affected * Duration

(choosing windspeed^3 rather than windspeed^2 as
representing wind power rather than simply wind force)

With many caveats and provisos (and remembering
that Lamb's analysis was for a much, much broader area
than just the British Isles, and included the NE Atlantic)
his " top ten" (actually top 14) for the period 1500-1989
we

Date Index
15 Dec 1986 20,000 (Low 916mbar near Iceland)
10-12 Jan 1792 12,000
4 Feb 1825 12,000
31Oct-2 Nov 1694 10,000
7-8 Dec 1703 9,000 (Defoe's Storm)
22 Oct 1634 8,000
6-7 Jan 1839 8,000
16 Oct 1987 8,000
14-16 Oct 1886 7,000
11-12 Nov 1570 6,000
24-25 Dec 1717 6,000
31 Jan-1 Feb 1953 6,000
2-3 Jan 1976 6,000
23-25 Nov 1981 6,000

I don't have the time to go through post-1989 events
to put them into perspective -- besides, someone may
already have done this and I shouldn't want to repeat
the exercise unnecessarily -- but a back-of-an-envelope
calculation puts the so-called "Burns' Day" Storm at
around 6000, last Friday's at 1250, and Tuesday night's
at 2250.

Philip Eden