Exceptional conditions with gusts of wind that reached record speeds of up to 120 km per hour (75mph) were at least partly to blame for the devastation inflicted by the fires in Attica, a leading Greek scientist said.
Manolis Pleionis,the head of the National Observatory of Athens said that “the high wind gust speeds certainly created the conditions for its rapid advance and spread.”
“We measured the gusts in the wider area and what we saw when we analysed the data was that there were truly high wind gust speeds. In some of our stations, at the Isthmus, Kaparelli in Viotia, on Parnitha and Penteli, in Ano Liosia and in Neos Kosmos these gusts were the highest that have been recorded in eight years that we have weather stations in these areas,” Pleionis said in an interview with the Athens News Agency.
The conditions that had prevailed while the fires burned were exceptional, according to Pleionis, with gale-force west-northwesterly winds that lasted from noon until 22:00 at night.
“The average wind speed was about 65 km an hour -the equivalent is about 7 Beaufort on average – but the peculiarity of these winds was that there were many gusts, strong gusts that reached up to 120 km an hour. Here the equivalent in Beaufort is 12. The gusts were momentary but it is these that do the damage and create conditions for [the fire to] spread,” he said.
Asked whether wind gust speeds can be predicted, the professor noted that forecasts were better at predicting average wind speeds.
