The Burns' Day Storm (also known as Cyclone Daria) was an extremely violent windstorm that took place on 25–26 January 1990 over North-Western Europe. It is one of the strongest European windstorms on record. This storm has received different names, as there was no official list of such events in Europe at the time. Starting on Burns Day, the birthday of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, it caused widespread damage and hurricane-force winds over a wide area. Meteorological history The storm began as a cold front over the Northern Atlantic Ocean on 23 January. By 24 January, it had a minimum central pressure of and began to undergo explosive cyclogenesis, which was sometimes referred to as a weather bomb. It made landfall on the morning of January 25 over Ireland. It then tracked over to Ayrshire in Scotland. The lowest pressure of was estimated near Edinburgh around 16:00. After hitting the United Kingdom, the storm tracked rapidly east towards Denmark and caused major damage and 30 deaths in the Netherlands and Belgium. Winds The strongest sustained winds recorded were between , comparable to a weak Category 1 hurricane or Hurricane-force 12 on the Beaufort Scale. Strong gusts of up to were reported, which caused the most extensive damage. The Great Storm of 1987 contained considerably higher wind speeds across every parameter but affected a smaller area of the UK. Both highest recorded sustained wind speeds of 86 mph and highest gust of 135 mph for example. Sustained periods of high gust speeds were also far higher in 1987. However, during the 1987 storm, many anemometers stopped recording because of power outages, breakages by the excess wind speeds and measurement maxima being exceeded. By 1990, the meteorological community had newer devices that remained independent of external power and could measure higher wind speeds. The general opinion is that wind speeds measured during the Burns' Day Storm provide an accurate picture, but there is a tendency to downplay windspeeds from the 1987 storm because of the patchy data available. In the 1987 storm, it was the counties of Sussex, Surrey, Kent and Essex (i.e. the SE of England) which were worst hit and suffered the most damage. Met Office forecaster of the day, Michael Fish became notoriously infamous by assuring a lady enquirer that "there was not going to be a 'hurricane'". Forecasting The Burns' Day Storm of 1990 has been given