Storm stories

[ladyofastolat]

The winds in the Solent are force 12 on the Beaufort scale – hurricane force, or so a sailing friend told me. All ferries are cancelled, which has the pleasant side-effect of cancelling a meeting I was due to go to, since the people leading it live on the Mainland. Not that I could have got to it anyway, since the roads are blocked by trees.

The tall conifers just outside my window are bending alarmingly. We all had a fierce debate last Thursday on what I should do when they start to fall - hide under my desk, or run for the stairs. This week, a different set of people are in the office, and opinions are still raging fiercely. I still adhere to my "cower gibbering under the desk and hope" approach.

How are other parts of the country faring in this gurt big wind?

EDIT (1 p.m.) It's getting worse. I just popped out, and it was seriously hard to walk to the car, and almost impossible to open the car door. Many roads are closed, some villages are cut off, and people are being told to avoid any roads that go up hills. I've been working downstairs most of the morning, nicely away from the row of swaying trees. It feels safer.

EDIT 2: But - woo-hoo! - our hosepipe ban has just been lifted!

Comments

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

During a hurricane we are told to go to the smallest, interior room in the house and take shelter there.

Here are the National Hurricane Center's safety actions. (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/high_winds.shtml#actions)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Though this isn't a hurricane, just a very windy day with some hurricane force winds - i.e. all daily life continues as normal, so no hiding in internal rooms. And my desk is right next to a row of windows, right next to a row of conifers *whimper*. Still, I've worked out that the wind direction means they're more likely to fall away from me than onto me, which makes me feel a bit better.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Ahh - I think you're confusing the meteorologists' definition of a hurricane with the definition used in south-east England. There, people say "hurricane" when what they really mean is "it's a bit windy".

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I think the '86 blow was described by the Met Office as a hurricane, I couldn't say I slept through it.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

From the Met Office (now based in Devon!) website:

"TV weather presenter Michael Fish will long be remembered for telling viewers, the evening before the storm struck, that there would be no hurricane. But he was unfortunate. Fish was referring to a tropical cyclone over the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean that day. This storm, he said, would not reach the British Isles - and it didn't.

It's worthwhile to consider whether or not the storm was, in any sense, a hurricane - the description applied to it by so many people.

In the Beaufort scale of wind force, Hurricane Force (Force 12) is defined as a wind of 64 knots or more, sustained over a period of at least 10 minutes. Gusts, which are comparatively short-lived (but cause much of the destruction) are not taken into account. By this definition, Hurricane Force winds occurred locally but were not widespread.

The highest hourly-mean speed recorded in the UK was 75 knots, at the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse. Winds reached Force 11 (56-63 knots) in many coastal regions of south-east England. Inland, however, their strength was considerably less. At the London Weather Centre, for example, the mean wind speed did not exceed 44 knots (Force 9). At Gatwick Airport, it never exceeded 34 knots (Force 8).

The Great Storm of 1987 did not originate in the tropics and was not, by any definition, a hurricane - but it was certainly exceptional."

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

This is what I've always thought, too - that it wasn't a hurricane, though it might have had some gusts that were hurricane force. It certainly devastated the Isle of Wight, though. A Victorian pier was destroyed, and there are entire bare hillsides that used to be covered with trees.

I saw a very interesting documentary on that storm a year or so ago. What I'd never realised was that it effectively led to the stock market crash (Black Monday), because things had been shaky anyway, but no-one could get into work on the Friday because of storm damage, so everything went crash.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Yep indeed. I had just started work (in the financial services industry) then, and remember it well (both the day, and the wider course of events).

It's not generally remembered, though, that the FTSE 100* ended the year higher than it had started.

*Am I the only one who gets annoyed with Channel 4 news calling it, "The index of 100 leading shares"? Anyone who wants to know the level of the FTSE 100 will know what is meant by, "The FTSE 100".

There might be more point to it if they occasionally gave the level of the mid caps, the 350, the small caps or the All Share index.

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

LOL! Probably true, although I remember visiting ladyofasolat one year when there were gale force winds, and being surprised that people were out driving in it. Here they tell us to stay off the roads when winds exceed 40 mph.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Well, since ten people died in the wind yesterday, maybe we should take these things rather more seriously.

It's different when it snows, though. I was very amused the first time I saw snow on the Isle of Wight. We had about half an inch of the stuff, and the entire place closed down - schools closed, shops closed, etc.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

My school (before my time) apparently used to take a cavalier attitude to snow, and consider it unBritish to panic and go home.

Until that legendary time (about 2 years before I got there I think) when the snow came down and they ignored it - and all the pupils and teachers were snowed in together for several days, and had to get emergency rations delivered by helicopter.

I imagine this is a teacher's idea of hell. After that, it was one flake and onto the busses!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

We have a limited version of that in my office.

We are on top of a large multi-storey car park, and staff have to park on the top floor of it. And the exit ramp is a spiral that isn't under cover, so it gets very slippery, very quickly.

A couple of years ago, several people took over an hour to get out of the car park, and longer than that to get home; including the boss. Now, she is very quick to call a halt to the proceedings at the first sign of snow!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Teachers' hell, indeed! But it would make a great setting for a children's book - all the jolly mischief that the children get up to when trapped at school.

I was in a school last year when a few flakes of snow fell. The children were hyper, but the teachers were even worse. "OOoh! Oooh! We might be able to go home early!" they were exclaiming, leaping around the staffroom in hopeful glee.

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

Oh that's terrible! I'm sorry to hear that. High winds can be so dangerous. Even emergency medical personnel and police won't go out in it when the winds get too strong.

We had about half an inch of the stuff, and the entire place closed down

Yep, it was like that in Atlanta, too. I remember the first winter I was there, they got about an inch of snow and the city was just paralyzed. They didn't know what to do. I was both amused and appalled.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I gather that LA is suffering from an inch of snow at the moment.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Where my parents live there are vats of grit at the sides of the road, and the gritters get out there as soon as cold weather or snow is forecast. I don't think they've even heard of grit down here. It's only a hundred miles away, or so, but the contrast is very noticeable, and rather disturbing.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Or in Newcastle, "A nice fresh day".

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* The first time I went to visit Pellinor's family, and got the bus up from Oxford on a cold winter's day. The bus drove through central Newcastle on a winter's evening... and all the girls had bare arms. I couldn't believe it!

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

Or as one rather staid American friend of mine succinctly put it, when confronted with the sight of a girl in a barely existant white translucent dress- "Nice thong!"

BTW- no-one believes me when I say that it was colder in Cleethorpes, where I grew up, than it is in Newcastle.