Monday 16th October
On this day 2017 Ex-Hurricane Ophelia lashes Ireland - Red suns and eerie skyglow - darkness in the balmy (barmey) early afternoon - Heatwave and wildfires on the continent
On this day 2017 Ex-Hurricane Ophelia lashes Ireland - Red suns and eerie skyglow - darkness in the balmy (barmey) early afternoon - Heatwave and wildfires on the continent
On this day (overnight 15th / 16th October) 30 years ago
1987 - The Great Storm (Great Gale)
1987 - The Great Storm (Great Gale)
Links
Includes a video But what if it happened day? The same weather scenario but with the benefit of modern forecasting: though not technically a hurricane, red severe weather warnings out because of the real potential for strong, damaging winds. This big improvement is thanks to much higher resolution computer modelling for weather forecasting.
My memories
Where was I on the night of the
Great Storm, Thursday October 15th – Friday October 16th
1987?
I was in my very very late teens, studying in Southampton, about a
fortnight into my second year, living in halls. The autumn term had started
unsettled, in weather and in mind. October began with a fine sunny day but then
the weather became more changeable. My science degree course was stimulating and I was doing
well, yet I felt anxious, apprehensive and down for much of the time. Even more
so the following year, my final year. My outlook was invariably bleak, At the
time, I thought this was typical student angst. I now know, I was living,completely unknowingly with autoimmune liver disease (AIH) – seeArtyTransplantee blog. Although I didn’t have any obvious physical symptoms,
it was affecting my mood for the worse. Relief came partly through praised for
doing well in course assignments, but mainy getting out during the weekends and
university holidays either solo, with my parents, or as part of the university
rambling and hillwalking group
.
.
Earlier on that Thursday night, I
was at the P&B block (now relocated onto the main campus. I think it was a social evening for the
freshers, like the one I’d been to at the beginning of my first year. Bored and
not making much impression on the first years, I left early and headed back to Halls. It was raining and the wind was getting up, but that was nothing
compared to what was to come during the early hours. I was completely unaware
of the weather forecast.
I didn’t sleep well on the best
of nights (the liver thing probably). That one, though, I woke up in the early
hours. I’m wasn’t sure if it was still raining, but the big thing was the
roaring wind, like nothing I’d encountered before. The gusts came and went in
quick succession, threatening to blow in the aluminium framed window of my
fourth floor room. I looked out of the window to the courtyard; leaves and
litter swirling in a vortex as the wind howled round it. The lamppost swayed. I
think the lights stayed on most of the time, but did go off at least once. I
don’t remember seeing or hearing any other people, outside or inside. I think I
was awake all through the early hours, listening to the wind outside and
cogitating on the highs and lows of the summer.
The wind began dying down just
before dawn. With the power still on in my hall, I put the radio on, the Radio
4 Today Programme and news “The whole of the southeast has been devastated…trees
down; many roads blocked; vehicles and buildings hit by falling trees; power
cuts…walls of roofs ripped off buildings”… The local news said “Don’t ring in
to say there’s a tree down, we are being swamped with calls”. No mention of
river flooding anywhere, it was all the wind, gusting to over 80 miles per hour
in places, including London.
Over breakfast, expressions of shock among my flatmates,
otherwise business as usual. I headed off (on foot) to my lectures, on time as
if nothing had happened. I don’t remember any trees down (though my walk was
through a built-up area) or any other obstructions. I don’t think I felt much
more of it until the evening. The only thing was, the trains were still
disrupted when I headed off out with the walking group on the Saturday morning.
I nearly got left behind on the train at Southampton as no one sure there what
was going on; Parkstone misheard by the railway staff as Pokesdown. But we got
to Poole Harbour. I think then, we took the Purbeck Ferry to Studland and
walked up onto the Purbeck chalk ridge. From there, a view over Poole Harbour,
in bright sunshine.
It didn’t occur to me to phone or
even write home to tell my parents and grandparents that I was OK, or check up
on them. True, phoning home from uni’ was hassly back then: long queues for the
one and only payphone in a block of upwards of fifty people; no mobiles /
smartphones, texts or email; but the post was fine and I could have written
home. I regularly did, with whacky letters, and got them back, eg the Pink Paper Brigade in my first year, to
which my father responded to with drawings of our pet golden Labrador
unravelling metres of pink loo roll, au Andrex. But not on this occasion.
Nothing until a couple of postcards: one from Mum saying “What a wind!”; and
one from Grandad asking if I was OK “your mother being particularly anxious”.
Sheltered from the open sea and
some way up the Itchen estuary from Southampton Water and the Solent, this part
of Southampton had escaped the worst effects of the storm. It was worst over
Surrey, Sussex and Kent. Though I saw the pictures on the TV news and in the
papers, I didn’t appreciate the wider extent and impacts until I headed out
further afield. In early November I went to Arundel – warnings of loose roof
tiles; bare patches in the hillside near the Black Rabbit, where trees had come
down; and a big branch of the arbutus tree by the bridge had been torn off.
Distinctive for its red bark, it subsequently came down in a storm in autumn
2000; then replaced with a cutting from a similar tree at Kew. It was closer to
home in woody Surrey where it was particularly noticeable: the local woods and
(Farnham Park) where we walked the dog and played as younger children. Large
swathes laid bare of trees at Puttenham Common (Cutmill) and Leith Hill, both
along the very wooded ridge of Lower Greensand. “Spring will be a bit blighted
this year”, my Dad said one day early in 1988 at Puttenham Common. One of the
worst affected areas on the South Downs was Chanctonbury Ring, to the north of
Worthing. During a half-term South Downs Way YHA based ramble in the early 1980s,
this had been a thick rounded clump of trees, similar to Norfolk Clump, above
and east of Arundel now. Blowing in from the SW, the Great Storm brought down
most of the trees on the south and western sides, and in the centre. Though the
trees have since been replanted and regrown, the evidence was still there when
we last looked in 2014; the trees on the north and east sides being much
taller.
On the night of the storm, my Dad
slept through it all, but not Mum. During the build-up at bedtime, she’d had the
feeling that it would “not be a normal wind”. Like me, she lay awake for much
of the night, hearing the wind roaring. I don’t think the big tree close to the
front of the house and garage dcame down, but the apple tree in the back garden
did. I think they were able to replant it, but anchored to the ground for a
while. On the Friday evening, they mentioned a difficult journey to and from
Guildford along the A31, which runs along the Hogs Back, the narrow chalk ridge
at the western end of the North Downs.
In the aftermath of the meteorologal
storm, a media storm. Blowing in after the notorious Michael Fish BBC TV
forecast before the storm hit on the Thursday, the Met. Office came under fire
for failing to forecast it. I was annoyed at lack of understanding here about
the complexity of weather forecasting. As the Met.Office say in their recent
new release and factfile, though, this prompted an overhaul of how they present
weather forecasts / weather warnings to the media and the public. Thirty years
on, thanks to big improvements in the resolution of weather modelling by
super-computers, forecasts are much more accurate. Compare and contrast Michael
Fish’s forecast with the mock forecast, under the same conditions in the video
attached to attached to their news release (11th October 2017).
There seemed to be a phase during the 1990s through to about the early 2000s,
when a storm would be forecast, and probably talked up by the media, only for a
What was all that about? moment afterwards
when it turned out to be not that bad really. Whenever they’ve said storm /
heatwave / snow and ice are coming during the 2010s, they’ve meant it.
Debate, too – was it wasn’t a
hurricane? Technically it wasn’t: the sea surface temperatures in the north
Atlantic are too cold for that. Hurricanes are tropical storms. It was a
common-or-garden low pressure system (like Ex-Ophelia, Storm Desmond etc).
Nonetheless, it was a deep one – the central pressure was just 951 millibars
according to the Met. Office. Deeper than Ex-Ophelia (963mb, though not as deep
as the Christmas 2013 storm which was around 936mb). Deep enough to generate
very damaging winds, certainly hurricane force.
“The worst storms in living
memory!” screamed a letter from someone near the River Swale at Richmond, Yorkshire;
read out on Radio 4 a few days afterwards. “Why does everyone take the south to
be the centre of the universe?”. She went on to remind them of the March 1968
storm which had struck Glasgow. I was too young to remember that one, but by
all accounts that was bad. There was also flooding in Carlisle. The flow on the
Eden peaked at around 1200 cumecs (NRFA: http://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/data/station/info/76007),
prompting the building of flood defences which held until overtopped by an even
bigger flood in January 2005. Nevertheless, I think anyone living and knowing
SE England well would agree on the severity of the storm in terms of the tree
toll and damage to property. Certainly for me, it’s had a lasting, even if
delayed, emotional impact.
In the years after 1987, I was
nervous when high winds forecast or heard, eg during a storm in late October
2000 when we had a power cut. We were living in NE Hampshire then. Before our
move there, we rented a flat in a multi-storey block in Petersfield. Though the
weather while we were there was generally quiet, any wind there was whistled
round the courtyard, unsettling me. All the more so with our aluminium window
frames reminiscent of my student hall.
A few days after the 1987 storm,
Monday 19th October, though totally unconnected, came the“Black
Monday” stockmarket crash.
The stockmarket soon recovered,
but not long after the Great Storm, my suspicions that something was up with the
weather and climate (global warming) mounted. Though extreme weather is nothing
new (Storms in 1703; cold and flood in winter 1947 etc) but my perception is
that it has been getting more common, worldwide. Before the Great Storm, there
was major flooding in SE England in mid-September 1968 and the notoriously long
hot summer and drought of 1976. Less than three years later was the Burns’ Day
Storm, January 1990. As the strong winds hit during the daytime, when more
people were out and about, more people were injured and the Europe-wide death
toll was about 98 (Wikipedia).
Subsequent notable wind / rain events include: autumn 2000 – there was the windy night of the power cut, but it was mostly notorious for the flooding affecting large parts of Britain, most notably York and the Severn valley. They were the worst floods in SE England since 1968. The Record Flood Level for 7th November still stands on the Arun at Amberley Castle. Summer 2007 flooding – the Severn again, and the Avon around Tewkesbury; also northern England. The southeast’s again turn in December 2013 (see notes from the time), with gales on 23rd December and flooding along the Mole, Wey, Arun amongst others on Xmas Eve. Even worse in Cumbria / northern Britain, with the floods in 2005, 2009 and Storm Desmond in 2015.
Subsequent notable wind / rain events include: autumn 2000 – there was the windy night of the power cut, but it was mostly notorious for the flooding affecting large parts of Britain, most notably York and the Severn valley. They were the worst floods in SE England since 1968. The Record Flood Level for 7th November still stands on the Arun at Amberley Castle. Summer 2007 flooding – the Severn again, and the Avon around Tewkesbury; also northern England. The southeast’s again turn in December 2013 (see notes from the time), with gales on 23rd December and flooding along the Mole, Wey, Arun amongst others on Xmas Eve. Even worse in Cumbria / northern Britain, with the floods in 2005, 2009 and Storm Desmond in 2015.
Ian Currie et al, Frosted Earth
Publications – photos in the aftermath
Memories of the The Great Storm haunted
me two years later as I fought, and eventually, but only just pulled through my
own internal storms. I left uni’ with a very good degree, yet my mood and
outlook were lower and bleaker than I’d ever known. Getting out and about into
the countryside and along the rivers of Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire continued
to give me some relief from this. It was a fine, warm summer and the woodland
was slowly but surely recovering from the storm. Trees had been replanted and
were regrowing. In July 1989, though, I
began to feel more definitely unwell. Come September, I was in hospital. I
won’t repeat the details here (more in my ArtyTransplantee blog) but I was
diagnosed at King’s College Hospital with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH, then
called Chronic Active Hepatitis, CAH). Completely unrelated to alcohol, my body
had been producing autoantibodies attacking my own lover. In early October, I
received some heavy news at my bedside (as did my mother) that the AIH had
advanced to the point the damage to my liver was irreparable and irreversible.
My only hope was a transplant. As the doctor spoke to me, images from the night
of the Great Gale came into my mind (the swaying lamp post at; the
bare hillsides in the months afterwards, likened to the scar tissue of my damaged live). I felt as if
I’d been struck my own devastating hurricane.
I must have been very near, or at
the very top of the waiting list as within hours of being put on it, I got my
transplant. Unlike most other people, no time to think about it; I just did
what everyone told me to do in preparation (the pre-med) and got on with it.
After a massive, ten hour long operation (knocked out and completely oblivious)
I woke up in ICU (the transplant room), “It’s all over now.”, was the first
thing I heard (from a doctor) when I came round. I couldn’t immediately see,
but I was on a ventilator and wired up to lots of drips and tubes. In due
course over the next few hours and days, most of these removed, but after such
a massive operation, I knew I was in for a long haul. I was lucky to recover
quickly, with no complications; but there were risks (infection nd rejection).
All told I was in hospital for ten weeks: five before the TP, five afterwards.
Coincidentally, I got my TP a few days before the second anniversary of the
Great Storm. As I’d been warned beforehand, there were highs and lows. One of
the blips came on the night of 15th / 16th October. I had
a fever of about 38.9oC, and I felt myself overheating. My suspicion
that this was rejection were right, but it subsequenty calmed down / was
brought under control by taking more steroids. I was reassured by one of the
junior doctors, before drifting off to sleep. I can’t have been asleep for more
than about an hour, but in that time, a burst of short but very vivid dreams.
My brain translated the fever into images of a stampede in Marks & Spencer,
followed by a images of a a tower looking a bit like the Oxo Tower by Thames in
London, transplanted to a garage I must have vaguely remembered from childhood
holidays in the Forest of Dean; the feeling of overheating / something shooting
up and up and about to blow. I woke up just before it did, but I was physically
and mentally disorientated. It must have been post-op muscle weakness and
exhaustion, through ac of sleep, maybe lingering effects of all the drugs I was
on, but I couldn’t move. I thought the nurse watching over me was writing a
report about me (the kind of report people tend to write after someone causing
trouble) but it was just a letter home to a friend Down Under. I thought I’d
been out for much longer – days. When the daylight came, I asked one of the
nurses, “Is it Monday the 16th today?”. I thought right, but had to
ask. No clocks or calendars visible from the bedside, it was easy to get
confused. As the day went on, I felt more alert and re-orientated.
While my parents were visiting a
few days later, we talked with one of the other nurses remembering the night of
the storm. She’d been on night duty. That October (1989) a windy night a night
or two later. It didn’t help that one of the windows in the side room I was in
was in a state of repair and taped up, but the nurse looking after me was
anxious. She called someone in to check the window. No problems, though like
now (2017) a very mild autumn, the high one day that October was 19oC.
Heating on in the hospital on October, whatever. Though the fever had gone, I
still felt hot all the time.
