I am much indebted to the delightful @ciderlass for pointing me in the direction of this one (and also her friend in Belfast). It would appear that up in Newcastle next week, it is going to be a bit windy.

And when I say a bit, I mean that, if measured against the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale, we are to experience winds more than double the speed of those required to reach the strongest recognised category of hurricane.

Like I said, a bit windy.

This is taken from Metcheck’s 7 day look at NE1, and with winds varying between 25 mph in the morning, 316 mph in the afternoon, and up to 344 mph in the evening, it’s little surprise that they expect a considerable wind chill factor, saying that (in the afternoon) an actual temperature of 1° centigrade will feel like -19°C because of the wind.

Never mind how cold it feels, I’m slightly more concerned about all of the buildings in the North East being torn from their foundations by the winds and blown away.

Of course, it’s always possible that either their forecast model is a teensy bit wrong, or that there is a problem with their calculations program somewhere…

The UK Met office also hints at it being somewhat windy (my emphasis):

It will be cold or rather cold at first, with showers which may be prolonged at times across northern and eastern parts and perhaps moving into central areas at times. Some showers likely to fall as sleet or snow. Overnight frost is likely in many areas with fog in places. By the end of the week and over the weekend, staying cold or perhaps even turning very cold, with an increased risk of longer spells of sleet and snow. It is also likely to be windy at times making it feel even colder.Met Office forecast for NE England, 15-24 December

See … it is likely to be windy. Although as yet, the Met Office haven’t mentioned anything about hyper-hurricane wind speeds, presumably because they don’t want to frighten everyone. But we’re all going to dieeeeeeeeeeee!

Unless of course MetCheck is wrong, since certain other sites, such as WeatherOnline and NetWeather are suggesting that the wind speeds will be considerably lower — admittedly, still what you might term ‘windy’, but not reaching gale conditions, let alone 50% more than the world’s previous record wind speed.

So I’ll probably just for the time being assume that MetCheck’s calculations are wrong: but I’ll maybe keep my eye out on the 16th for super-huge storms or hurricanes building up over Newcastle, just to be on the safe side…