Great storm of 1987

File:Windstorm.JPG

Satellite image of the powerful storm

The Great Storm of 1987 occurred on the night of 15 October to 16 October 1987, when an unusually strong weather system caused winds to hit much of the south of England and some of Northern France. It was the worst storm to hit England since the Great Storm of 1703 (284 years earlier) and was responsible for the deaths of 18 people in England.

According to the Beaufort scale of wind intensities, the storm had sustained winds of hurricane force, although there are some who would use the term European windstorm to describe the system as the term hurricane refers to tropical cyclones originating in North Atlantic, North and Northeastern Pacific, or the Central North Pacific. The storm had winds equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Although the storm was declared a rare event, expected only to happen on average every several hundred years, the Burns' Day storm hit the UK in January 1990, less than three years later and with comparable intensity.

Origins

The storm originated from a cold front in the Bay of Biscay that met with cold air coming from the north. When the two systems collided, a severe low pressure front developed with a central pressure of 958 mbar (comparable to a Category 3 hurricane, which typically has a central pressure between 945 and 964 mbar). How such a low pressure system developed on this particular occasion has not been fully explained. One theory, not established or generally accepted, is that it might have been a result of the jet stream coming from America in the wake of Hurricane Floyd (1987) and exceptionally warm weather of the Bay of Biscay.

Effects

England

The storm made landfall in Cornwall before tracking northeast towards Devon and then over the Midlands, going out to sea via The Wash. The strongest gusts, of up to 100 knots, were recorded along the southeastern edge of the storm, hitting mainly Essex and Kent.

The storm caused substantial damage over much of England, downing some 15 million trees (including six of the seven famous oak trees in Sevenoaks and most of the trees making up Chanctonbury Ring), blocking roads and railways and leaving widespread structural damage to buildings. Several hundred thousand people were left without power, which was not fully restored until more than two weeks later. Local electric utility officials later said they lost more wires in that single storm than they had in the preceding decade. At sea, as well as many small boats being wrecked, a ship capsized at Dover, a Sealink cross-channel ferry, the MV Hengist, was driven ashore at Folkestone, and the transmitting mast of the Radio Caroline radio ship the Ross Revenge sustained apparently minor damage only to collapse in a force 10 gale the following month. (Even though the storm caused severe disruption on board the ship, Radio Caroline was able to continue broadcasting for most of the day during the storm, although taped music was used, as the record decks were unable to function due to the movement of the ship caused by the storm.)

18 lives in total were lost in England and the storm cost the insurance industry £2 bn; this makes it the second most expensive UK weather event.

There are theories that effects from the Storm were a contributing cause of the Black Monday stock exchange collapse.

France

The area of Bretagne and the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy were affected by the storm, where 15 people were killed.

1.25 million homes were left without electricity supply and a quarter of Bretagne's forest was destroyed. The total damage was estimated at ₣23 billion.

The church at Concarneau was damaged.

Criticism of the Met Office

In the immediate aftermath the Met Office was severely criticised by journalists for failing to forecast the storm correctly. Interviewing a dishevelled Ian McCaskill on BBC News on 16 October 1987, the newsreader Michael Buerk made the remark "a fat lot of good you guys were last night", which was typical of the media response at the time.

The Met Office conducted an internal inquiry , scrutinised by two independent assessors, and a number of recommendations were made. Chiefly, observational coverage of the atmosphere over the ocean to the south and west of the UK was improved by increasing the quality and quantity of observations from ships, aircraft, buoys and satellites. Continued refinements were made to the computer models used in forecasting and changes were made in the training of forecasters.

In addition reforms in the way the Met Office reports warnings of severe weather were implemented, leading to substantially more warnings being issued in the future. Further deployment of improved tracking devices and improvements in the computer model simulations were supported by the purchase of an additional Cray supercomputer. Warnings for the Burns' Day storm three years later were accurate and on time.

Michael Fish

BBC meteorologist Michael Fish drew sharp criticism for reporting several hours before the storm hit, in seemingly flippant fashion: "Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't." (YouTube source). In fact his comments about a hurricane had nothing to do with the UK; they referred to Florida, USA, and were linked to a news story that immediately preceded the weather bulletin, but have been so widely misreported that the British public remain convinced they referred to the approaching storm. According to Michael Fish, the woman in question was actually a colleague's mother who was about to go on holiday in the Caribbean and had called regarding Hurricane Floyd to see if it would be safe to travel. Even if Fish had been talking about the approaching storm, he would still have been technically correct in his statement, as the storm of 1987 was neither tropical or post-tropical in nature, and therefore could not possibly be a hurricane.

Fish went on to warn viewers in the UK to "batten down the hatches", saying it would be "very windy" across the south of England, but predicted that the storm would move further south along the English Channel and the British mainland would escape the worst effects. The remainder of his warning is frequently left out of re-runs which only adds to the public's misrepresentation of his forecasting that evening.

His analysis has been defended by weather experts. In particular, the lack of a weather ship in the Southwest Approaches, due to Met Office cutbacks, meant the only manner of tracking the storm was by using satellite data (automatic buoys had not been deployed at the time).

Ironically, earlier forecasts as far back as the preceeding weekend had correctly identified that gale force winds would affect Southern England. However later runs of the model had indicated a more southerly track for the low pressure system, incorrectly indicating that the strongest winds would be confined to Northern and Central France.

Aftermath

A great deal of effort and money was put into the post-storm "clean-up", when in hindsight it would have been better to let nature re-assert itself. A few people, such as the writer Oliver Rackham and the charity Common Ground were active in trying to prevent over-much destruction of trees which, though fallen, were still living .

See also

• List of natural disasters in the United Kingdom
• Great Storm of 1703
• Kyrill
• European windstorm
• European windstorm names
• Sting jet

External links

• Met Office report
• Michael Fish and the 1987 Storm
• Picture of the Sealink car ferry the MV Hengist beached at Folkestone
• BBC news report, On This Day, including video