STORM OF THE CENTURY
Met Office verdict as 97mph Ciara brings havoc to roads, rail and flights – and swamps new flood defences
STORM Ciara wreaked havoc across Britain yesterday as gales of up to 97mph ripped down buildings and hundreds of people were forced to leave their homes.
The Met Office dubbed Ciara the ‘storm of the century’ after more than a month’s rain fell in the space of 24 hours.
Helen Roberts, a senior meteorologist with the Met Office, said: ‘In terms of area, this is probably the biggest storm this century. I have not seen amber warnings on this scale, across all of Wales and much of England.’
Ciara hit Britain on the back of a Gulf air stream travelling at 265mph, which was as fast as it had ever been, she added.
Towns in the Pennines and Yorkshire Dales that have endured years of flooding are again under water after new defences failed, while roads and railways across the country were blocked by raging torrents and falling trees.
Hundreds of flights were axed, including 140 British Airways and 12 Virgin Atlantic
services at Heathrow, while others were delayed or diverted. Flights at Manchester, Luton, Stansted, Gatwick, Birmingham and Leeds Bradford were also cancelled.
Even the Queen was affected, being unable to attend St Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham for ‘safety reasons’.
In West Yorkshire, there was anger as defences built after flooding five years ago failed – or made the problem worse – when nearly three inches of rain fell, leaving the centres of Hebden Bridge, Todmorden and Mytholmroyd under water. Yesterday afternoon, 240 flood warnings and 190 flood alerts were in force across England. The Environment Agency urged people to stay away from exposed sea front areas, and to avoid posing for ‘storm selfies’.
In Whalley, Lancashire, residents were evacuated using inflatable boats. Motorways including the M1 were disrupted by flooding and jack-knifed lorries, while gales closed the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at Dartford, the M48 Severn Bridge and the Humber Bridge. The Port of Dover was closed, with ferry services to France and Belgium suspended. The M11 was closed in Cambridgeshire amid concerns a damaged hangar roof at historic Duxford Airfield could be blown on to the motorway. Major rail lines shut by flooding included the West Coast main line between Preston and Carlisle, and the East Coast main line at Doncaster. The winds folded a crane in half in Stanmore, north London, while a Grade 1-listed windmill at Burghle-Marsh, Lincolnshire, had its roof and sails torn off. Sharon Noble, owner of the neighbouring Windmill Restaurant, said: ‘It happened at 10.30am after the sails were going the wrong way round. We were advised to close. It’s just very sad. The windmill is owned by the county council and run by volunteers. Hopefully they will restore it because it’s been there 175 years.’ Lindsey Wells, 36, said of the crane at Stanmore: ‘(It) looks like it’s made of spaghetti. It’s lucky it wasn’t during the week, as it’s a very busy, big development.’ One side of the Bridge House Guest House in Hawick, Scotland, collapsed into raging torrents below, with fears the whole building may follow it. Sporting events including horse racing and Manchester City’s Pre
mier League football match against West Ham were called off, while the National Trust closed a large number of sites.
The strongest gust was 97mph on the Isle of Wight. That counts as hurricane force but is short of the 118mph record for England and Wales, at Gwennap Head, Cornwall, in December 1979. Honister Pass in the Lake District was the wettest place, with 177mm (6.96in) of rain in 24 hours to 4pm yesterday – against a normal monthly average of 112mm (4.4in) in Cumbria for the whole of February. In 24 hours up to midday, 96.8mm (3.81in) of rain fell at Scar House reservoir in the Yorkshire Dales.
Today, gales are again forecast for south-west England and along the entire South Coast, with winds of 60 to 70mph expected between 10am and 7pm.
Even inland, gusts of 50 to 60mph are forecast. Further north, a warning has been issued for ice and heavy snow showers between 3pm today until noon on Wednesday.
The warning covers the Pennines from the Peak District to the Scottish Border, Cumbria and parts of Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire. Up to one inch of snow is expected at low levels, rising to as much as six inches on high ground.
The high winds yesterday enabled a BA flight to achieve the fastest subsonic trans-Atlantic crossing, completing a journey from New York to London in 4hrs 56mins. The plane landed at Heathrow 1hr 43mins ahead of schedule.
This was meant to be bad news, and in a way it is: storm Ciara (easier to write than to pronounce) has swept across the United Kingdom, disrupting travel on road, rail and in the skies.
Floods have inundated low-lying areas, while on high ground the ferocity of the gales has caused wreckage to property and, perhaps, to the balance sheets of insurance companies.
But still, when i saw the newspaper headline last week, ‘ Enjoy the calm before storm Ciara’, something in me rebelled against that apparently unexceptionable statement.
i enjoy storms, and i am sure i am far from alone. Children all seem to do so, perhaps because they don’t have the adult anxieties about the threat to property, or indeed the knowledge that such weather can end lives, when a tree suddenly falls on a passing motorist.
That almost happened to my wife last year. she drove off to church, and when she came back found the track to our house completely blocked by a mighty tree which had fallen across it. i heard the sound of it crashing, and was horribly aware that if my wife had set off maybe a quarter of an hour later, she could easily have been buried under it.
Elemental
We live, though only about 50 miles from London, surrounded by forest. That makes the experience of storms, while more dangerous, also more thrilling. The roar of the gales through the trees is like a mighty symphony composed by nature itself.
indeed, some of the most wonderful of all music was written to emulate a storm — these are the great composers’ homage to the majesty of the elements. The ‘storm’ in Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony is probably the most well-known. Among British composers, there is nothing to touch Benjamin Britten’s ‘storm’ in his Four sea interludes.
But no one, in my view, captured the elemental power of nature more than the Finnish composer sibelius, for example in his Tempest suite. And his final work, Tapiola, depicting a storm in a Finnish forest, contains perhaps the most aweinspiring passages of music ever written.
it helped that sibelius lived in a country of extreme weather — weather of which he was deeply respectful.
Although Britons live on a bunch of islands on the edge of the Atlantic, fortunately we experience nothing like the hurricanes which repeatedly pulverise the coastline on the other side of that ocean.
And the UK never experiences the devastating typhoons whipped up on the great plains of the U.s. Midwest. some years ago, i was in Omaha, Nebraska, and was amazed when the skies turned completely black — in the middle of the day.
The feeling of pressure in the air was overwhelming in itself. This presaged a colossal cyclone. i was actually on the way to the airport, where we were all urged to go into the basement shelters specifically built for this (quite regular) event.
Perhaps this marks me out as especially child-like, but i was exhilarated, as much as anything else. i suppose this is why so many like to watch programmes about extreme weather: but watching a recording of a typhoon is a bloodless and banal experience compared with the reality.
still, even in the far less extreme climatic conditions of the high Weald of East sussex (where we live) there is enough drama in a storm to satisfy the senses — and keep us awake at night as the wind howls and the windows rattle. i have lost count of the times the electricity has been cut off because a tree has fallen across the supply wires. We have a large number of torches and candles on hand, and i remember how when the children were little, it was always something of an adventure for them when the candles had to be used.
On several occasions we have been trapped in our home for days because of the flooding in our neck of the woods. so we have a large chest freezer, with more than enough provisions for such an emergency (though obviously when the power is down, you can forget about using the microwave for defrosting).
Many years ago, the ancient earthworks which support the causeway that leads to our house gave way as a result of flooding in a storm; a Bailey bridge had to be built rapidly to allow us to get in and out and regain contact with what we call civilisation.
Godsend
But, again, it was most exciting for the children, even if it was a blow to their parents in the form of a sharp increase in the household insurance premiums.
Yet adults, too, are thrilled by the wild unpredictability of what passes in this country for extreme weather. Perhaps even more so nowadays, in an age when modern technology has made our existences so much securer than our forebears endured.
Our lives — in homes that are centrally heated, insulated boxes and with our communication with the world increasingly experienced through the internet — have become ever more detached from the physical reality, and arbitrariness, of nature.
in a way, that is a godsend, as the predictability it brings to our lives allows us to plan and work much more easily.
On the other hand, this hermetic existence can produce a sense of near-omnipotence which is delusional and even deadening.
so when the might of nature bursts in on us, it is not only a necessary reminder of our insignificance, it also makes us feel more vividly alive.