Technically it wasn't a hurricane, it was the remnants of one from the US. By the time it reached here the winds weren't strong enough to be classed as a hurricane.
I was squatting in Wood Green at the time. The day before, a squatter I knew, who happened to be from Louisiana, was telling me he could smell something in the air that made him think a hurricane was coming. I told him to stop talking bollocks. Anyway, he obviously had a nose for hurricanes. It blew loads of trees down in our street and blew a few wooden porches off the front of some houses. My porch, which I'd recently fixed up as it had been hanging off, stayed intact. So, I could righteously shake my fist at the shoddy work of house builders and Haringey council's maintenance department
It sounded like Godzilla was fucking the house, much too loud to get to sleep to. In the middle of the night, I realised someone was throwing stones at my window, I looked out and realised a friend was off his face and had decided to go for a walk in the weather and ended up at mine. I let the daft bugger in and we spent most of the night chatting shit, drinking and sharing spliffs.
I was working in Tottenham at the time, in the stores at an Everest windows depot. I thought, no fucking way was I going into work and was sure no one else would be. So I'd just got to sleep in the morning when a bunch of window installers started banging on my door. They wanted the keys to the stores so they could get their shit. I chucked the keys out the window, told them to fuck off now, and went back to bed.
Of course there have always been loons claiming all kinds of crazy shit about natural disasters etc. but it's disheartening how they've moved so much further in from the fringe
I've heard that described as the 'anger-industrial complex'...
A bunch of angry people wrote in to points of view and the newspapers about it at the time, plus there was a lot of noise in the news. The problem with social media is that it's given all of the deranged 'green pen letter' fuckwits a platform, a megaphone, and the means to network and organise with similar unhinged morons.
When I woke up, the power was off and the phone wasn't working. I just thought it was a bit strange, got up and took the dog to the park, and was mildly bemused to see a fair few fallen branches on the ground. Then walked back via a different route, and noticed a few places where there were smashed roof tiles on the pavement. It still didn't dawn on me that there'd been some kind of weather event.
It was only when I popped into the paper shop and everyone in there was going on about it that I knew what had happened.
When I woke up, the power was off and the phone wasn't working. I just thought it was a bit strange, got up and took the dog to the park, and was mildly bemused to see a fair few fallen branches on the ground. Then walked back via a different route, and noticed a few places where there were smashed roof tiles on the pavement. It still didn't dawn on me that there'd been some kind of weather event.
It was only when I popped into the paper shop and everyone in there was going on about it that I knew what had happened.
I can understand this as I once slept through a "mild" earthquake that was strong enough to shunt the bed a couple of feet across the room. I only realised why the bed had moved later talking to people in the village
Storm Dennis was a bad one. Reading Wikipedia I learned it was one of the most intense extratropical cyclones ever recorded and had gusts of wind recorded in Iceland equivalent to 'Category 4' speed.
I missed the great storm of 1987, as I was working for a pirate radio station in Ireland at the time, we were shocked seeing the ITN News on Super Channel, a mate & me both tried calling our mothers, his in Sevenoaks & mine just down the road in Tonbridge, but the phones were out for over a week, which was very worrying for us.
Meanwhile some of our mates were out on the Radio Caroline ship, virtually all shipping had ran for shelter aside from Ross Revenge, which as a pirate station would have been arrested, one large freighter capsized off Dover and a continental ferry was driven aground on a Kent beach, so they had a rough time about 12 miles out in the North Sea.
Somehow the Ross Revenge rode the 'hurricane' out and to the crew's surprise found the next day that they were one of the few radio stations still operating. Power failures ashore had silenced most of land based stations.
The following night we were able to pick-up a weak signal in Ireland from Radio Caroline, and the relief in knowing our friends & colleagues had survived despite how frightening it had been as waves as tall as buildings came crashing down on their ship.
Then I had over a week before I could speak to my mother, and be reassured that she was fine, and power had been re-connected a couple of days before the phone.
I missed the great storm of 1987, as I was working for a pirate radio station in Ireland at the time, we were shocked seeing the ITN News on Super Channel, a mate & me both tried calling our mothers, his in Sevenoaks & mine just down the road in Tonbridge, but the phones were out for over a week, which was very worrying for us.
Meanwhile some of our mates were out on the Radio Caroline ship, virtually all shipping had ran for shelter aside from Ross Revenge, which as a pirate station would have been arrested, one large freighter capsized off Dover and a continental ferry was driven aground on a Kent beach, so they had a rough time about 12 miles out in the North Sea.
Somehow the Ross Revenge rode the 'hurricane' out and to the crew's surprise found the next day that they were one of the few radio stations still operating. Power failures ashore had silenced most of land based stations.
The following night we were able to pick-up a weak signal in Ireland from Radio Caroline, and the relief in knowing our friends & colleagues had survived despite how frightening it had been as waves as tall as buildings came crashing down on their ship.
Then I had over a week before I could speak to my mother, and be reassured that she was fine, and power had been re-connected a couple of days before the phone.
My parents were visiting my brother, who was living in Hampshire at that time in 1987 and all the power lines were down so they had no TV or radio to find out what was going on. Fortunately the phone line was still working, so I had managed to phone his house to check if they were all okay, whereupon I was able to tell them what had happened.
Nope, most of the legal stations were off air in the south-east, because of power cuts, including Capital Radio, as Bahnhof Strasse pointed on the 'Memories of the Great Storm of 1987' thread.
Was in my last year of school, Chris Tarrant used to wake me every morning, on the day of the storm the radio clicked on and there was just a hissing. Really thought The Bomb had gone off, peeked out of the window and saw shit everywhere, so went back to bed.
I've Steve Conway's book, he was a newsreader on Caroline, he was woken up by the breakfast show DJ to get the first news bulletin ready - 'Good morning to you, Steve,' Peter called out as he banged the door. 'Time to get up, and by the way, it's a trifle rough this morning.' < what a under statement!
I've posted a photo of the page describing him trying to 'pirate' the news from teletext services only to find the TV transmitters off air-air, ditto with local stations, and even Radio 1, finally finding Radio 4 on air, thanks to emergency generators, 'tis worth a quick read -
I remember it really well - my friend had a little hens night the night before ( in Gillingham) and I remember going home about midnight and thinking what a lovely evening lol - it was particularly calm & still.
Then waking up to feed the baby about 3am and no power - I looked out the window and all sorts of things were blowing up the street. I was living opposite the strand and the howling off the Medway river was something else!
The next day was my friends wedding in Chatham, and a huge old oak tree had blown down outside the Pentagon shopping Centre so things were running late- but we were all off chops anyway so no one cared
Nope, most of the legal stations were off air in the south-east, because of power cuts, including Capital Radio, as Bahnhof Strasse pointed on the 'Memories of the Great Storm of 1987' thread.
I've Steve Conway's book, he was a newsreader on Caroline, he was woken up by the breakfast show DJ to get the first news bulletin ready - 'Good morning to you, Steve,' Peter called out as he banged the door. 'Time to get up, and by the way, it's a trifle rough this morning.' < what a under statement!
I've posted a photo of the page describing him trying to 'pirate' the news from teletext services only to find the TV transmitters off air-air, ditto with local stations, and even Radio 1, finally finding Radio 4 on air, thanks to emergency generators, 'tis worth a quick read -
Some of those places are still rebuilding from Hurricane Ian in 2022 and even an earlier Hurricane in 2004 it won't surprise me if many choose to leave. Insurance costs must be astronomical as well
I remember it really well - my friend had a little hens night the night before ( in Gillingham) and I remember going home about midnight and thinking what a lovely evening lol - it was particularly calm & still.
Then waking up to feed the baby about 3am and no power - I looked out the window and all sorts of things were blowing up the street. I was living opposite the strand and the howling off the Medway river was something else!
The next day was my friends wedding in Chatham, and a huge old oak tree had blown down outside the Pentagon shopping Centre so things were running late- but we were all off chops anyway so no one cared
Some of those places are still rebuilding from Hurricane Ian in 2022 and even an earlier Hurricane in 2004 it won't surprise me if many choose to leave. Insurance costs must be astronomical as well
yeah theres increasingly places in the world where you cant get house insurance....already like that in england near certain rivers that keep flooding, i can well imagine that spreading to the carribean sea areas.... saw a suggestion insurance bill will be around 60 billion $$$ for milton
i can well imagine 50-100 years from now many houses are going to be bunkerlike domes
yeah theres increasingly places in the world where you cant get house insurance....already like that in england near certain rivers that keep flooding, i can well imagine that spreading to the carribean sea areas.... saw a suggestion insurance bill will be around 60 billion $$$ for milton
i can well imagine 50-100 years from now many houses are going to be bunkerlike domes View attachment 446506
If you go for a walk on Toys Hill North Kent today they left a few acres with trees fallen as they were for scientific study reasons to see how things regenerate, quite interesting, but yeah the north downs got flattened
Toys Hill day after..."95 per cent of the mature oak and beech trees on the escarpment at Toys Hill were flattened."
Yep, 6 of the famous ancient oaks were toppled, it was said Sevenoaks should be renamed Oneoak.
I remember the Kent Messenger newspaper group publishing a book of photos, the scenes were mind boggling, I remember this one of just loads of fallen trees, and the only clue that it was actually a main A-road was a some road signs sticking out amongst the trees.
I grow up in my teens between Oxted in Surrey, and Edenbridge in Kent, 90%+ of trees in that area were taken out. In the video below there's a piece on a couple heading off from Edenbridge on the 45 minute drive to Pembury Hospital, as the wife had gone into labour, they never got there, they were trapped by trees falling both in front and behind their car, it took them about two hours to walk back home, with her in labour!
In this documentary, the on-duty head of the National Grid explains he had to switch off the electric to London and most of the SE, to prevent the whole grid collapsing, taking the whole country out, which would explain why TV and most radio stations in that area were off air in the morning. There would be back-up generators at main transmitter sites, but most would need engineers to reach them and make the switch over, so TV and national radio in the SE probably came back as the morning went on, there wouldn't have been back-up generators at relay transmitter sites, nor stand alone local radio sites.
At a guess, the Caroline newsreader found Radio 4 on long-wave, as that site is in the the Midlands, well away from the power cuts, plus as it covers most of the UK, it's been considered important in times of national emergencies, so was probably manned 24/7.
I was 12 when it hit. Micheal Fish's on-air dismissiveness about the hurricane made him the poster boy for the "weather forecasting is bullshit" types. The only plus back then was that no-one outside of a secure mental health facility thought that the weather could be controlled.
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are the future
