Had a tile blow off the roof last night and hit the back of the Yeti, fortunately it missed the paintwork but hit the rear windscreen and the glossy curved trim bit to the right of the rear windscreen. The windscreen is ok but a bit of a scuff mark on the glossy trim bit. Could have been a lot worse.

indeed, this was last January when we got 102 mph (wasn't covered on TV though as London wasn't involved) 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-16411914

Sorry about any damage suffered by anyone/anything but it would seem yet another example of gross over-reaction by the Met Office. Like motorway matrix signs that tell porkies: in the end, no-one believes anything with potentially disastrous results. Did none of these people ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf??

The winds reached 99mph down here on the isle of wight last night, mind you it didn't wake me up.

Sorry about any damage suffered by anyone/anything but it would seem yet another example of gross over-reaction by the Met Office. Like motorway matrix signs that tell porkies: in the end, no-one believes anything with potentially disastrous results. Did none of these people ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf??

 

How is it gross over-reaction?

They knew there was a very large storm coming with the potential to cause serious damage so they warned people in advance.

As it happens it wasn't quite as severe as it could have been, but it still caused 100mph winds, a reasonable amount of damage and at least two deaths so far - three if you include the missing swimmer.

It seems like a perfectly reasonable and proportionate response to me.

Sad to hear you suffered slight damage; hate windy weather as much if not more so than snow. With the forecast we where expecting to see some of it up here. Was quite windy yesterday from the morning on but getting up this morning at 6:45 and there was hardly a whisper of wind, picked up a little since mind.

 

 

TP

Well it took out my recently installed TV aerial, so it's pretty serious in my household  . 

 

Luckily have still got the sat dish thus avoiding total domestic meltdown   Just need the power back on!

Sorry about any damage suffered by anyone/anything but it would seem yet another example of gross over-reaction by the Met Office. Like motorway matrix signs that tell porkies: in the end, no-one believes anything with potentially disastrous results. Did none of these people ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf??

Gross over-reaction by the Met Office?  All the evidence I've seen suggests that they got it about as right as they possibly could have done!  Several days warning, predictions pretty much spot on - short of using a crystal ball, how could they have improved on what they did?

Gross over-reaction by the Met Office?  All the evidence I've seen suggests that they got it about as right as they possibly could have done!  Several days warning, predictions pretty much spot on - short of using a crystal ball, how could they have improved on what they did?

I think the point was that if it hadn't involved the south of the country then it wouldn't have been blared out on the news for the last week that we were all doomed.

Precisely. And it has been very rapidly downgraded in news reports from 'the biggest storm since 1987' (which I remember well and which was quite a storm) to 'one of the worst storms in the last few years'. Winds of the speed noted are not all that uncommon but we refuse to adapt the infrastructure to them. yet again, overhead lines are down on the East Coast main line - doesn't happen to the TGV lines in France.

I think the point was that if it hadn't involved the south of the country then it wouldn't have been blared out on the news for the last week that we were all doomed.

I take that point entirely.  But given that forecasters forecast and can't state with 100% accuracy exactly where a storm will hit, I think they did an extremely good job.  It's entirely fortuitous that the storm didn't extend further north than it did, but it was still a remarkably accurate forecast - particularly as it was made several days ago, and before the storm even existed.

 

You can't blame the Met Office for over-reacting - that's the fault of scruffy little sensational tabloids like the Mail and especially the Express.  And imagine what would have happened if the Met office had failed to make the warnings and it had hit the north!  They can't win, can they?

 

 And imagine what would have happened if the Met office had failed to make the warnings and it had hit the north!  They can't win, can they?

 

It would have been the same as most other autumns or winters where we get those kinds of winds but it isn't in the news?

 

As somone else said above, a plane got hit by a bus shelter in 102mph winds but it wasn't news worthy or part of some "doom alert".

 

Storms in late autumn when the trees are still in leaf are especially dangerous, i will grant you that, but the point is media and the met would have not hyped this up if it was just going to happen to northern england or scotland.

 

As an example, this is the highest recorded wind speed in my area, all be it a gust, in february this year - 113.9 mph.

It barely cracked the local news.

 

Anyway, this has drifted off into one of those north and south things

As I said - blame the press, not the Met Office.  The Met Office don't do hype - just forecasts, and remarkably accurate ones at that.

Well, from my window I can see the 20 odd feet of 6' feather edge fencing that I've now got to replace (together with the ex-shrubs it is laying on) so I would say it did blow a bit down here. But on the positive side, the 60 foot tree that came down next door could have come my way rather than fall across the road. And I'm actually glad to see the back of it because every year it produces loads of sticky husks that from experience I know give extremely stubborn stains on car paintwork and carpets (car and indoors). But as intimated in the posts above, this was it a hurricane, wasn't it a hurricane" has all the potential to degenerate into a "living in a cardboard box eating a handful of hot gravel" thing. (Yoinger members of the forum may have to have explained the vaguely Monty Python reference).

 

But going back to car things, I must say that the last couple of days are the first time I've driven my Yeti in strong side winds and I was pleasantly surprised at just how stable on the road it was - almost no sign of buffeting or drift. 

 

Good to hear you got off so lightly Vectis.

Sunshine, Blue Sky and a bit Windy overhere in the middle of the Irish sea.

Tony

It would have been the same as most other autumns or winters where we get those kinds of winds but it isn't in the news?

 

As somone else said above, a plane got hit by a bus shelter in 102mph winds but it wasn't news worthy or part of some "doom alert".

 

Storms in late autumn when the trees are still in leaf are especially dangerous, i will grant you that, but the point is media and the met would have not hyped this up if it was just going to happen to northern england or scotland.

 

But this is part of the point. UKMO warnings are made, in part, on what is the normal range of weather for a region - it's not an absolute thing. The forecast winds wouldn't have been especially unusual for eg Scotland and so the warnings would have been at least one level lower. But they were exceptional, albeit not unknown, for southern England. (Although in the event not as bad as some model predictions were suggesting - the low didn't seem to engage the cold side of the jet until later than projected at one stage - but I don't know how eg Denmark will have fared.) It's the same reason that the building regs are more stringent for the windier northern and western parts of the country re potential wind damage.

 

The media will have to answer for themselves. Don't confuse UKMO with the BBC or the other media.

Edited 28 October, 201312 yr by prodata

We lost our power for 5 hours, one small tree has a bit of a lean - but we should be able to sort that out.

 

Now saying on Radio 2, that 4 have died as a result of the storm 

Sorry about any damage suffered by anyone/anything but it would seem yet another example of gross over-reaction by the Met Office. Like motorway matrix signs that tell porkies: in the end, no-one believes anything with potentially disastrous results. Did none of these people ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf??

 

I think they got so much flack last time (1987?) that they err of the side of caution nowadays.

Thankfully no damage here, hope everyone else is the same.

 

Fred

 

Fred

I think they got so much flack last time (1987?) that they err of the side of caution nowadays.

Thankfully no damage here, hope everyone else is the same.

 

Fred

Someone even dug Michael fish out of retirement yesterday and stuck a microphone under his nose for a comment!  Now that's what I call a "slow news day"!

 

Otherwise: actual Met office forecast, and BBC if you listened carefully to which areas they predicted would be affected, were remarkably accurate. (The proper BBC forecasts that is, not Breakfast News Carol - bless her. But even she was spot on first thing this morning!) Not unusual in this day and age. Said it would affect SW most then travel up channel. None of the forecasts I saw or heard suggested it would get much north of the Midlands.  Which it hasn't.   Looks to be headed Denmark's way now, but they've had plenty of warning too.

 

The so called "national" press are nothing of the sort, but are very nearly as London centric as the Evening Standard. So anything which might affect them personally gets all hyped up. Always has. Mail and Express particularly.  

 

From someone who was living in Surrey in October '87.  Now that night was "interesting".

Not quite a north south thing is it? If you go by the population potentially affected then the area of the storm was more than 2/3 of the country-It is always interesting when the forecasters spend as long on the far north as they do on the south despite the fact more people live in greater london than all of the uk north of the the mersey.

Sad to hear your yeti was damaged, the corner plastic peace is not to expensive had one on my yeti, can't remember the price,  but a falling tile can do a lot of damage. 

 

  just spent 9 hrs clearing up after the little breeze we had last night, no damage at home but cut up 5 trees on the road to get to work  , then lots more at 3 different jobs today.  hate to think what I am going to find tomorrow, south west facing property on top of a hill  with large mature  woods  :wonder: .

 

 

 

 

Precisely. And it has been very rapidly downgraded in news reports from 'the biggest storm since 1987' (which I remember well and which was quite a storm) to 'one of the worst storms in the last few years'. Winds of the speed noted are not all that uncommon but we refuse to adapt the infrastructure to them. yet again, overhead lines are down on the East Coast main line - doesn't happen to the TGV lines in France.

 

Having been in France on the night before it hit the UK I can assure that in the southern part of Brittany it was very severe.

We were staying with friends where we lost power in the midle of the night and this had not been reconnected 6 hours later, they had 2 trees down on their farm and 2 field loose boxes for their horses blown over. Many local roads were closed, as were several of their raliway branch lines and the Pont Normandie was closed and we had to drive back to Calais via Rouen instead. The TGV in Northern France was subject to speed restrictions due to the wind, as well.

Thankfully we used the Tunnel, not the boats!!

 

 

Otherwise: actual Met office forecast, and BBC if you listened carefully to which areas they predicted would be affected, were remarkably accurate. (The proper BBC forecasts that is, not Breakfast News Carol - bless her. But even she was spot on first thing this morning!) Not unusual in this day and age. Said it would affect SW most then travel up channel. None of the forecasts I saw or heard suggested it would get much north of the Midlands.  Which it hasn't.   Looks to be headed Denmark's way now, but they've had plenty of warning too.

 

The so called "national" press are nothing of the sort, but are very nearly as London centric as the Evening Standard. So anything which might affect them personally gets all hyped up. Always has. Mail and Express particularly.  

 

From someone who was living in Surrey in October '87.  Now that night was "interesting".

 

I was up very late on the Sunday evening and on the METs own webpage it had Yorkshire as an amber alert with a big old wind sock and the rain (localised flooding).

A few hours later that had gone away and the new report sugegsted it'd be 70 miles south of yorkshire and greatly diminished.

I don't blame the MET for getting the track wrong but the press are very london centric and prone to huge exageration.

It does appear to be a massive hang over of some recent storms (and a hangover of 1987 in particular).

i have great sympathy for loss of life and damage that people suffer but it wouldn't even be in the new the next day if it had flattened large swathes of scotland.

 

To put it in perspective.

I was in Miami when Hurricane Floyd pretty much destroyed North Carolina in 1999.

I've never seen anything like it and i doubt i ever will in the UK.

 

The UK has a very odd fixation with the weather and, in real terms, our weather is far from the "extremes" it gets made out to be.

Having been in France on the night before it hit the UK I can assure that in the southern part of Brittany it was very severe.

We were staying with friends where we lost power in the midle of the night and this had not been reconnected 6 hours later, they had 2 trees down on their farm and 2 field loose boxes for their horses blown over. Many local roads were closed, as were several of their raliway branch lines and the Pont Normandie was closed and we had to drive back to Calais via Rouen instead. The TGV in Northern France was subject to speed restrictions due to the wind, as well.

Thankfully we used the Tunnel, not the boats!!

I can understand speed restrictions but have to question why, when there is an unusual but not exceptional bit of wind in the UK, our overhead power lines on the railway seem always to come down (and often in the same locations, eg around Peterborough). They don't in France - better quality of infrastructure!

I don't know why SNCF impossed a speed restriction, but generally it is because of movement of the "traction" wire, which takers it out of the safe parameters of the pantograph rubbing area, with the potential of it snagging and being pulled down. Outside of the TGV lines the SNCF did experience delays following the storms in Northern France over the weekend. Perhaps the fact that is was over the weekend meant it wasn't reported as much as it didn't affect so many (and the UK press wouldn't mention it anyway!!)

 

It must also be remembered that the TGV lines were impossed as new builds on the local population and were specifically designed to take into account weather, wind and such like, whereas we in the UK have to make-do with adding 21st century technology on Victorian designs.