The New Year's Day Storm (Norwegian: Nyttårsorkanen) was a powerful European windstorm that affected much of northern Scotland and western Norway on January 1, 1992. DNMI estimated the strongest sustained winds (10 min. average) to have reached 90 knots (45 m/s). Unofficial records of gusts in excess of 130 knots (67 m/s) were recorded in Shetland, while Statfjord-B in the North Sea recorded wind gusts in excess of 145 knots (75 m/s). There were very few fatalities, mainly due to the rather low population of the islands, and the fact that the islanders are used to powerful wind. In Norway there were one fatality, in Frei, Møre og Romsdal county. There were also two fatalities on Unst in the Shetland Isles. The low figure was probably because it struck in the morning on a public holiday.
Famous quotes containing the words year, day and/or storm:
“They give us a pair of cloth shorts twice a year for all our clothing. When we work in the sugar mills and catch our finger in the millstone, they cut off our hand; when we try to run away, they cut off our leg: both things have happened to me. It is at this price that you eat sugar in Europe.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“The greatest waste of time he knew of was to count the hours—what good can come of it?—and the greatest illusion in the world, to lead one’s day by the sound of the clock, and not by precepts of common sense and understanding.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“Thee for my recitative,
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day
declining,
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat
convulsive,
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)