Storm Alert

I saw the damage caused by the Tornado on the news in London yesterday. I do hope there was no loss of life. I think I quickly heard there was only one serious injury.
We here in the southern confines of Canada received an incredible 2.5 to 3 feet of snow in the last eighteen hours and we should be getting another eight to ten inches of snow this morning. No public transportations, no taxis, nothing is going on today. I’ve seen my fair share of snow storms but this one takes the icing on the cake.

What I remember that was strange about 87 was that the windows steamed up on the outside.
At the time I was working for a firm of Structural Engineers in Bishops Stortford. Obviously, with us being scattered over various parts of Herts and Essex, the only bloke to get in the office that day lived up the road and wandered down to see if there was any damage to the building. Unfortunately for him, neither the power or phones had been affected and he was assailed by phone calls from irate people demanding that a structural engineer be dispatched to their rural properties immediately, on pointing out that we didn’t have either a JCB or Chieftan tank to pile through the fallen trees and debris, he was insulted blind, but felt he had the authority to tell them all to f### off before giving up and going home.

Mine nowhere as exciting but for the first time in London the wind was strong enough to take the shoe off my friend by the outdoor ice rink in Canary Wharf. Luckily I caught it (and put it back on her:p). The wind was so strong you could hardly breathe but for some strange reason all the girls looked great in skirts!:D :diablo:

It’s been a tad rough…

Was booked on one of my regular return trips LGW-GSY on Flybe BAe146 yesterday, and half expected it to be cancelled due to the forecast. However, it boarded as normal. As we sat waiting to leave Gatwick at 11:35am the Captain warned that it would be fairly bumpy after takeoff, and that Guernsey was showing 40knot winds straight down the runway so the landing approach might also be somewhat bumpy. Flight was exactly as described, and although the finals were very bumpy down to about 20ft, the touchdown itself was an absolute greaser.

The return trip at 18:05 was similar, with a very wild final approach into Gatwick from the East, but again the actual touchdown itself was so soft that it was barely felt. Interestingly GSY-LGW is normally about a 35min flight time, but we landed 10 mins ahead of schedule due to picking up a 100knot tailwind component at 17,000 feet.

Strange that in some fairly wild weather we had two of the lightest touchdowns I can remember, yet on other trips in good weather with same airline, and on same type of aircraft we’ve experienced “arrivals” that nearly re-arranged our spines:confused:.

And yes, some of us do remember the storm of ’87 all too well 😮 . We’d only lived in Lewes for three months, and spent a sleepless night listening to roof tiles being ripped off our newly aquired house, and to dustbins being blown along the street like soft drink cans while the wind howled like a demon. The power supply failed at some point, and we saw our neighbours car being slowly rolled along the road by the wind, even against it’s handbrake, before he emerged wearing a widly flapping dressing gown and crash helmet to apply the handbrake more tightly.

Next morning many houses along our road had the same pattern of missing tiles (approx 25% of our roof tiles had been removed), there was the sound of chainsaws everywhere as people cleared roads. We found three or four intact roof tiles buried to about a third of their length, intact, in our front lawn (moral of that part of the story being don’t venture out if it ever happens again as one of those would have killed anyone it hit). Fences and sheds were flattened, and a bush in our garden had been “burnt” down one side by the sea-salt laden wind (the nearest patch of coast being approx eight miles away based on the wind direction!). I walked into the office, and on the way through the town the real scale of the storm became apparent – A whole stand of pine trees outside the Prison were laying down like dominoes someone had knocked over, large trees were down, or large branches were hanging from them. Lewes high street looked like a scene out of the blitz with smashed clay tiles everywhere, and someone’s brand new car was sitting there with a complete chimney stack (with intact chimney pots)firmly embedded vertically in the roof. As the power and phone lines remained off for a while we simply sent home those few local staff who managed to turn in, and then locked up once the trickle of arrivals dried up,and went home ourselves, as there was little else to do until the power came back on, and roads and traffic got back to normal. When I got back home most of the neighbours were also back, and we spent the afternoon up ladders patching/repairing roofs along our road, as there was no way you could get hold of a roofer.

It was one wild 24 hour period that I’ll never forget. The only good thing was that the wind was at it’s worst at around 4:00am, so there were very few people out and about, so casualties were fairly light. Had it happened at 4:00pm, then the story would have been very different.

– Even to this day Mrs PF still gets very nervous if the weather forecast mentions strong overnight south-westerly winds in our patch of the south east. Me, I simply tell her I’m going to sleep with my earplugs in, and sort out any devastation the next morning.

Paul F

Well, if it’s any consolation EGTK has a high wind warning valid until 0100 tomorrow morning, 35 knots gusting to 45-50. I think we’ve had the worst of it now though and all the aircraft are still facing the same way they were parked up.

Was it an F3 or a GR4.

GR4 with full payload by the looks of things ?

Anyone in the Tornado in North London or see it?

James

Was it an F3 or a GR4.

Anyone in the Tornado in North London or see it?

James

Has anyone else noticed any damage after last nights stormy weather, we have had our wheelie bin blown half way across the road, and someone down the road has had there fence broken and tree uprooted.

Maybe it was some A.S.B.O. kids “avin a larf”;)

I think we’ve had the worst of it up here – we just had an assload of rain last night.

And I was out in it! :rolleyes:

It seems to be happening every night, we can’t get a good nights sleep, as of this moment it’s horrendous again, I’m looking out the window at the poor sods coming into Stansted Airport, glad I’m on the ground, only just.
Anyone have any good memories of the famous storm of October 87.
We were more or less camping out in a pair of semi derelict cottages we had just bought, I remember waking up at about 4 in the morning and wondering what the hell was going on, I tried to go outside but it was too dangerous, our only damage was 4 missing slates.
Our village was cut off without power for 4 days, all the roads were blocked by fallen trees and power lines.
It was interesting that the Yanks came down from Wethersfield Base to help out but seemed to know the date and time that the power would come on, spot on too, very wierd.
I was able to rig up a lighting and 12v power supply from my car, even managed to run a TV so we were quite comfy, bloody hell, as I am writing this it’s now started thundering and lightning, the dogs are crapping themselves, whats happening?

what a night, sounded like a Hurricane was blowing around here in the early hours.. the windows was creaking at times, spent a hour or so earlier putting my garden fence back up. the strongest winds we have had around here for a long while.

Just very heavy rain here over night and this morning. It’s still windy, however the sun is out and the skies clear.