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Great Storm of 1987
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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 southern England and 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 at least 22 people in England and France combined (18 in England, at least 4 in France).
According to the Beaufort scale of wind intensities, this storm had winds of hurricane force; however, the term hurricane refers to tropical cyclones originating in the North Atlantic or North Pacific.
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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 southern England and 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 at least 22 people in England and France combined (18 in England, at least 4 in France).
According to the Beaufort scale of wind intensities, this storm had winds of hurricane force; however, the term hurricane refers to tropical cyclones originating in the North Atlantic or North Pacific. Hurricanes have a very different wind profile and distribution to storms, and significantly higher precipitation levels. The storm had an air pressure equal to that of a Category 3 hurricane, and wind speeds equal to a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, although that scale does not apply to this system, because it was not a hurricane and, as such, would never be measured or risk-assessed by that scale; hence the significant difference in rated intensities between wind speed and barometric pressure.
Although the storm was declared a rare event, expected only to happen once every several hundred years, the Burns' Day storm hit the United Kingdom in January 1990, less than three years later and with comparable intensity.
Origins
Four or five days before the storm struck, forecasters had predicted bad weather on the following Thursday or Friday. By midweek, however, guidance from weather prediction models was somewhat equivocal. Instead of stormy weather over a considerable part of the UK, the models suggested that severe weather would reach no farther north than the English Channel and coastal parts of southern England.
During the afternoon of 15 October, winds were very light over most parts of the UK. The pressure gradient was slack. A depression was drifting slowly northwards over the North Sea off eastern Scotland. A col lay over England, Wales and Ireland. Over the Bay of Biscay, a depression was developing.
The first gale warnings for sea areas in the English Channel were issued at 0630 UTC on 15 October and were followed, four hours later, by warnings of severe gales.
At 1200 UTC on 15 October, the depression which originated in the Bay of Biscay was centred near 46° N, 9° W and its depth was 970 mb. By 1800 UTC, it had moved north-east to about 47° N, 6° W, and deepened to 964 mb.
At 2235 UTC, winds of Force 10 were forecast. By midnight, the depression was over the western English Channel, and its central pressure was 953 mb. At 0135 on 16 October, warnings of Force 11 were issued. The depression now moved rapidly north-east, filling a little as it did, reaching the Humber estuary at about 0530 UTC, by which time its central pressure was 959 mb. Dramatic increases in temperature were associated with the passage of the storm's warm front.
It is now clear that for sea areas, warnings of severe weather were both timely and adequate, although forecasts for land areas left much to be desired.
During the evening of 15 October, radio and TV forecasts mentioned strong winds, but indicated that heavy rain would be the main feature, rather than wind. By the time most people went to bed, exceptionally strong winds had not been mentioned in national radio and TV weather broadcasts.
Warnings of severe weather had been issued, however, to various agencies and emergency authorities, including the London Fire Brigade. Perhaps the most important warning was issued by the Met Office to the Ministry of Defence at 0135 UTC, 16 October. It warned that the anticipated consequences of the storm were such that civil authorities might need to call on assistance from the military.
In south-east England, where the greatest damage occurred, gusts of 70 knots or more were recorded continually for three or four consecutive hours.
During this time, the wind veered from southerly to south-westerly. To the north-west of this region, there were two maxima in gust speeds, separated by a period of lower wind speeds. During the first period, the wind direction was southerly. During the latter, it was south-westerly. Damage patterns in south-east England suggested that whirlwinds accompanied the storm.
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 south-eastern 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, historic trees in Kew Gardens, Wakehurst Place, Nymans Garden, Hyde Park, London and Scotney Castle 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 one storm than in the entire 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. Although 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. When the storm was at its most intense (stage 3), whales were blown onto dry land.
In London, many of the Plane trees lining the streets were blown down overnight, blocking roads and crushing parked cars. Building construction scaffolding and billboards had collapsed in many places, and many buildings had been damaged. The following morning, the BBC television centre at Wood Lane in west London was unable to function due to a power failure, and the television breakfast-time news was broadcast from a single position emergency studio in central London, reinforcing an impression of national emergency. Most public transport in the capital was not functioning, and people were advised against trying to go to work.
The storm cost the insurance industry £2bn, making it the second most expensive UK weather event on record. Peak wind velocities were in the early hours of the morning, which probably reduced the death toll.
The storm hit the Isle of Wight at 2am, and Shanklin Pier on the south-east coast of the island was broken into three pieces as a result of mountainous waves. Plans to rebuild the pier were soon abandoned, and the rest of the pier was demolished by contractors shortly afterwards. A monument now stands in front of what used to be the pier entrance.
There are theories that after-effects of the storm were a contributing cause of the Black Monday stock exchange collapse.
France
The départements of Finistère, Morbihan, Côtes-d’Armor and Ille-et-Vilaine in Brittany, and the Cotentin Peninsula (départements of Manche and part of Calvados) in Normandy were the areas in France most affected by the storm, which followed a line from Morbihan and Rennes to Deauville. 1.25 million homes were left without electricity supply and water, and a quarter of Brittany's forest was destroyed. The total damage was estimated at ?23 billion.
Météo France announced “une petite tempête en provenance des Açores” (a little storm coming in from the Azores), which reached the Brittany coast at about 6pm, later than expected. This depression caused little damage, with only 50 to 60 km/hour winds. A much deeper depression hit Ouessant on the extreme western tip of Brittany at midnight. It was measured at 948 hPa (or 948 mb) at the Brest-Guipavas weather station, the lowest reading since the station's creation in 1945. Weather stations on the coast at la pointe du Raz, la pointe Saint-Mathieu and Penmarch gave no readings, as they were damaged by the high winds. 148 km/h was the wind speed measured at Brest. The centre of the storm crossed Brittany from Penmarch to Saint-Brieuc at 110 km/h, with gusts of wind up to 187 km/h at Quimper, 200 km/h at Ouessant and 220 km/h at la pointe de Penmarch and Granville. Waves were measured at 16m off Ouessant and Belle-Ile-en-Mer.
Despite the rarity of this kind of storm, similar strength storms hit France again in 1990 (Tempête Vivian) and twice in December 1999, so it is perhaps not quite as rare as believed.
The church at Concarneau was damaged but never rebuilt, and was finally demolished a few years later.
Criticism of the Met Office
In the immediate aftermath, the Met Office was severely criticized 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.
BBC meteorologist Michael Fish drew particular criticism for reporting several hours before the storm hit, seemingly flippantly: 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, but having said that, actually, the weather will become very windy, but most of the strong winds, incidentally, will be down over Spain and across into France.
Fish has subsequently claimed that his comments about a hurricane had nothing to do with the UK; they referred to Florida, USA, and were linked to a news story immediately precededing the weather bulletin, but had been so widely repeated out of context that the British public remains convinced that he was referring 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.
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 misconception of that evening's forecasting. 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, as automatic buoys had not been deployed at the time.
Ironically, earlier forecasts as far back as the preceding 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. Interestingly enough, the French meteorological office used a different computer weather model to the British, and the French model proved more accurate in predicting the severity of the storm in the Channel.
Aftermath
A great deal of effort and money was put into the post-storm "clean-up", when in hindsight it could have been better to simply 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 unnecessary destruction of trees which, although fallen, were still living.
See also
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