Weather

Getting windier here. I have with difficulty managed to tie the tarpaulin down tighter on my greenhouse roof - no plants in it now but only half a roof on (another story).....am not very confident it will stay on though.

Have candle in old brass candlestick ready, has been for ages but no power cuts yet, touching wood here.

Windier in East Sussex and short sharp showers. Thinking of all in the south and the Midland. Hope weather men are wrong. Hope no one damaged or injured. My niece is in France at Disney World and the Ferries have canceled the crossings!

January 1968 - I was home on leave from Kenya for my sister's wedding. A week before the big day. I woke up to a roaring such as I'd never heard before - despite being brought up in Ayrshire. The hurricane cut a swathe through the centre of Scotland. Towns and villages cut off, roofs blown away, big trees downed like matchsticks. My mum rang up the roofer first thing and he already had a queue of over 100 customers!
I'm hoping that, this far from the coasts, we will be relatively safe here in Cheshire. Fingers crossed.

We were living on our boat in the last ' hurricane'. The amazing thing to see was that the tide didn't come in, such was the force of the wind.
It allowed us to show off a bit as electricity was cut off in the whole village and we were completely self sufficient with solar panels and wind generators.

Bracing south westerly here in N Wales - not cold at all , but capable of blowing you off the cliff top. The best weather forecast is usually the Countryfile one so we should watch that maybe.

Absolutely chucking it down and very windy here now in West Scotland.

Hope all of you who are in the path of the forthcoming storm get through without any problems

DD SIL and DGC at their weekend/ holiday house in Somerset - hope they leave early and get home safely before everything kicks off. Have tried to ring, but am afraid of being seen to "fuss"

Is it a British thing that OUR storm/hurricane is named after St. Jude - The patron saint of lost causes???

The three stages of readiness are, yellow.....be aware, orange....be ready and red....take action. Assuming you have done everything possible while your status is orange, what on earth can you do when it's red....pour a large G&T?

Batten down the hatches?

Tomorrow is St Jude's day - that appears to be why - not the alphabet thing for naming hurricanes. Seems a bit pessimistic to me!

My favourite saint.

Have you espoused many lost causes, Galen? Merlot that sounds like a very good idea. I'd advocate a good single malt myself!

Good luck all in England and Wales! We in N. Ireland are not supposed to be in the direct path of the storm but it is getting VERY windy here. No rain though........yet.

Keep safe y'all.

I can hear the wind getting up, soughing (wonderfully onomatopoeic word) in the trees.

Very windy here on the Fens. I hope we keep our electricity until after Downton Abbey!!

I've charged up my kindle paperwhite just in case I have to resort to an early night with Alan Titchmarsh .

I have charged everything merlotgran but the met office have reduced to wind speed on the Weather app but the BBC news is talking about train services cancelled until after 09.00 tomorrow. All this planning so nothing will happen. Hopefully.

An early night with Alan Titchmarsh?? Oh well Merlot. Whatever lights your candle!

I was taking photos of the Fire and Rescue chaps last weekend in their inflatable boats, practicing their boat handling skills against the ferocious current in the Straits. Hoping that they do not need to put them to a test over the next 24 hours.

On A303 at Stonehenge, returning from wonderful conference in (Eastbourne.) Quite windy, bit rainy. Will be glad to get back to Bideford!

Anno It is the 1968 one that I remember vividly too. Two sets of upstairs neighbours abandoned their flats and sought refuge in our little cottage as slates showered down into the yard. We huddled round a transistor radio by candlelight and I made cups of tea on our camping stove and ham & egg for all at 6.00am. Daylight showed a strange scene of random devastation and undisturbed normality. I was able to get a bus half way to work until we reached fallen trees blocking the road. Had to clamber over them and walk the rest of the way. I saw slates embedded 6ins deep into sandstone walls and the garden shed which, famously took off from a garden at the east end of town, flew over houses and streets and landed in a field at the west end. Miraculously no one was killed or even seriously hurt locally - a few people suffered cuts sweeping up broken glass.

DH, a joiner, had been complaining the day before that after a busy spell in the run up to Christmas he had no work lined up for the new year. After the storm he worked flat out for at least 6 months on first emergency and later permanent repairs. It's an ill wind...........

Yes, G23, it was a VERY ill wind! But a week later, for my sister's wedding in St Andrews, we had glorious sunshine and I was too warm wearing cosy tights under my bridesmaid's dress!

I'm in Cheshire and it is still where I am. Daughters other half is part of Hampshire Fire and Rescue in North Hampshire so I assume he will be busy tonight and tomorrow. I remember 1987 as though it was yesterday, to call it devastation would be an understatement. Let's hope no one is put in danger or suffers as a result of what's to come. We have been warned this time.

Living in Reading, we were on the edge of the The Big Storm. We slept through most of it and was very surprised to turn on the radio in the morning and hear what had happened. It took me three hours to get to work in Central London, only to have to turn straight round and go home again as my office had shut for the day!

The London-Reading axis had a far stronger storm about 2 years later. DD was at college in Newbury. She is/was, as they say a well built lass, and she had to loop her arm around a lamp post to save herself when the wind started to blow her across a road into the path of oncoming traffic

DS had a gap year job with Porsche in Reading who had an industrial building which was clad in large plastic panels with insulation behind them. As the wind got under these, blew them off and sent them flying across the front of the building like Frisbys, all those with company Porsches were rushing out to move them, round the back of the building and into the workshop to protect tem from damage.

Home now! Very wet, very windy and that's just Theseus but no great problems. It was windier in Eastbourne than it is here. But I have a feeling it may change quite rapidly... Isn't home nice?!!

Still waiting for something to happen in the East Midlands; calm before the storm perhaps?