30 years on, is another Great Storm on way?
THIRTY years after the Great Storm left a trail of destruction across Britain, another hurricane is on the way.
The remnants of Hurricane Ophelia is expected to hit the South West early Monday. It will bring downpours and winds of up to 75mph as it heads north-west – but it is weakening in strength and weathermen are not expecting a repeat of the widespread damage of the 1987 storm.
Nicola Maxey, a spokesman for the Met Office, said: ‘Hurricane Ophelia is now considered to be a Category 2 hurricane and is currently at the centre of the Atlantic. As it travels across it will have lost much of its strength and energy because the temperatures will have dropped.
‘As it tracks across Ireland and hits the west coast of England we can expect to see some strong winds in any exposed and coastal areas.
‘We will still be looking at gusts of between 55 and 75mph generally, but possibly higher in some exposed locations.’
The storm of 1987, which struck overnight on October 15, brought winds of up to 100mph and led to 18 deaths. BBC weatherman Michael Fish has never lived down his forecast assuring Britons that a hurricane was not heading our way.
Some 15million trees were uprooted, trains derailed, and parts of the country plunged into darkness as pylons were toppled.
Weather expert Dennis Mersereau said the UK was ‘in line for a rough couple of days’ as Ophelia rolls through, with the possibility of power cuts, fallen trees and flooding.
Writing on the website Popular Science, he described it as a ‘weird’ storm, having formed out in the Atlantic ‘where hurricanes usually go to die’.
Alex Burkill, a Met Office forecaster, said cold sea temperatures mean Ophelia will not be strong enough to be categorised as a hurricane when it hits Britain.
But it will certainly bring an abrupt end to what is expected to be a warm weekend during which temperatures could hit 72C today and 75C across the South tomorrow, with similarly unseasonal figures further north. Temperatures in London could potentially be up to 10C above the average for October.