The Storm ⛈ ?

I have decided that I am a wet weather magnet. On three occasions yesterday, when I judged that we were in one of the frequent dry spells, I took the dogs out just long enough to be far enough from home to be thoroughly drenched by the time we got back, and we were.

This morning around 06:30, with a low probability of rain and allegedly calmer winds but the trees didn't seem to think so, the same thing happened again.

I've been very fortunate. It's been very windy but then on the Fylde coast it often is. No crashing waves at high tide. No trees down. No power cut. Just a bit stir-crazy at not being able to get out for a decent walk for exercise but I'll live with that.

We left East Yorkshire yesterday at 7.00 am to drive to Nottinghamshire for a funeral, we left in heavy rain but soon hit blue skies, we had a good journey.
Nottinghamshire was blustery but not bad.
We then drove on to our daughter in Cheshire, again blustery but OK.
Not sure if it was timing or good luck but I had a sleepless night on Thursday wondering if we should abort our trip, so glad we didn’t!

I had no power for 10 hours. Its quite exhausting - doing nothing. I was quite discombobulated. No hot food, more importantly no tea. No noise from the radio/tv. No internet. No contact. Luckily I have a wood burner and plenty of candles. In the end I painted by candlelight and read Sebastian Faulks by head torch.
It certainly got me thinking and put a lot into perspective.

People have heated soup on top of their woodburners Marmight, might be worth a try next time? Frying pan would work too, eggs at least.

I sent my kids a 'power cut' pack late last year - battery radio, batteries, candles, torches, a camping light, and a powerbank for their mobile phone. I would have sent them a flask, but a bit too fragile as they are glass inside. I filled my Thermos with hot water on Thursday evening and it was still hot today.

Wish I'd bought myself a battery radio but baulked at the £25! Still need to see if I can put batteries in my old one.

Sadly it has a slopey top Shandy and nowhere to lodge a makeshift grill inside. I may have to buy a camping gas ring in case there’s a next time. It’s been blowing a hooley and raining for the last 20 hours. I’m surprised we still have power!

I was expecting possible power cuts, so brought in the candles, matches and camping stove from the garage, found the torch (understairs cupboard) and put batteries in the kitchen radio. Of course, it didn't happen here!

MayBeMaw It always used to amaze me that drivers on the M25 had to be told there was 'Fog' on a morning when you could hardly see 20 yards in front of you. But still there would be loads of cars without any lights, driving as fast as they could manage in the traffic.

We lived in Suffolk during the Great Storm of 1987, the one where Michael denied that there was a hurricane on its way.
It swept over Kent and Suffolk causing immense damage.I was in Milton Keynes during the night that it happened and was woken by the wind. But that was nothing compared to the damage caused further east. It was apparently the worst storm in 3 centuries.

It is estimated that 15 million trees were destroyed, including 6 of the oaks at Sevenoaks. The wind was so powerful that it shook our house and the bed moved (according to my OH) Our dog was so frightened that he allowed her upstairs. Along the Suffolk coast near Walberswick there's a plantation of pines. All of them had their trunks snapped at about 10 feet high. It was as though a child had knocked over a pile of bricks with their hand.

Many stately homes, and the not so stately, lost specimen trees that had been planted 200 years earlier. Think of a park in the style of Capability Brown with its specimen trees all felled. That was what it was like.

We were without electricity for 11 days (we had been told 14) and it was a common to see helicopters overhead ferrying new poles for telephone lines. Luckily we had a wood burner and a camping stove.

I was very saddened by the loss of rare trees at Kew in the 1987 storm. I was glad to see Green Planet cover the Kew seed bank in one of the programmes.

We are experiencing Franklin at the moment in North Essex. Just sent DH out to rescue the doormat!
DD2 has another power cut. Good job she's addicted to candles.
Trains etc. cancelled again tomorrow morning.

As Franklin succeeds Eunice and Dudley, I cannot help wondering whether the binary labelling of storms, alternating male and female names, is seriously out of touch with modern gender sensibilities, and whether the process is unfair to names common to both sexes, such as Evelyn, Hilary, Lindsay, Vivian, etc.

Personally, I am further confused by my initially associating Franklin not with a male such as FDR, but with a maid or some such in the Peter Wimsey canon.

No it isn’t out of touch grumppa, the names are put forward by the public, and are selected from many different cultures. Some are non binary, eg Storm K this year is Kim.

I really don't understand - we've had extremely high winds and rain all day, lights flickering but it hasn't been mentioned on the news. The winds have been worse than those on Friday, when we were in the red zone.

Many people have been debating as to what was worse, this last storm or the 87 one.
All I know is, that, in 87 I was living onboard our boat and the tide never came in that night That was on the east coast.
I can’t find anything to say that this happened anywhere on the west coast this time.

I think it’s been overshadowed by the position elsewhere in the UK Callistemon21, which is even worse. There are lots of flood warnings in place for Wales, I got this off the Brecon community news page, the river was up to the bridge arches at 7pm tonight. I feel for Crickhowell, Abergavenny and Monmouth, and hope they don’t get bad floods again as it flows downriver from here.

Very windy here on the edge of Liverpool. The bins fell over a few days ago and we have just left them until the wind dies down.

Sorry forgot to attach.

Very wild, wet and windy here today, too. (SW London.). Dd and Gdcs were supposed to be coming to stay tonight, but put it off because the drive could be too hazardous.

Casdon

I think it’s been overshadowed by the position elsewhere in the UK Callistemon21, which is even worse. There are lots of flood warnings in place for Wales, I got this off the Brecon community news page, the river was up to the bridge arches at 7pm tonight. I feel for Crickhowell, Abergavenny and Monmouth, and hope they don’t get bad floods again as it flows downriver from here.

Casdon
?

Strong winds here tonight much worse than Friday.North Devon..

I hope you're high up, Casdon.

I hope everyone is and remains safe. The constant roar of the wind through the surrounding trees is becoming almost too much. It has hardly let up since last Wednesday and, as Callistemon says, it seems worse than on Friday when in the red zone. At least our power was restored and miraculously hasn’t gone off again.

Just as stormy as Friday, here in SE Surrey. I wouldn't be surprised to see more trees down after all the rain we have had over the weekend and such strong gales again.

It's been very windy all night but did stop raining.

Our tree is more or less intact but I think we will get it well trimmed.

We’re in the grip of Storm Franklin here in Cheshire. It’s so much worse than Friday. The wind started to get really strong in the early hours - around 2am. Quite a few bangs and crashes during the night as a result. There’s a couple of tree branches in the front garden from the oak trees on the school field adjacent to us. All the way down our side of the road you can see into neighbours back gardens through gaps where panels have blown out. I have two fence panels down - one had only just been repaired and had been battened well down with metal reinforcers, so there must have been some hefty gusts. There’s a beautiful Magnolia tree in the garden which backs onto ours - it flowers early, and it had just developed buds. There are a fair few of them in our garden now - very Sadat it’s gorgeous when in full bloom. My neighbour’s shed roof blew off in the first storm. He had had it repaired and now it’s off again and sitting on his patio. Just watched our friendly visitor squirrel trying to run across the bottom fence. He got halfway across and was blown down the other side. Just seen him scampering off for cover. Stay safe everyone.