The Great Storm of 1987

 

It is the 20th anniversary of the great storm of 1987, so I was wondering if anybody was affected by the hurricane that ripped through the British Isles and did anyone see the infamous broadcast, the one that Michael Fish says did not actually happen.

 

fish has been on tv all morning saying that he was refering to someone who called from FLORIDA! as if theyd be watching bbc! :lol:

 

in 20 years ive never heard this excuse before.

 

im too far north for the hurricane force winds to have effected me.

fish has been on tv all morning saying that he was refering to someone who called from FLORIDA! as if theyd be watching bbc! :lol:

 

in 20 years ive never heard this excuse before.

 

It is new to me as well.

 

 

im too far north for the hurricane force winds to have effected me.

 

More than Manchester?

Edited October 15, 200717 yr by Mr. Mondo

The wrong man

By Mark Kinver

Source: bbc.co.uk

 

Michael Fish's infamous weather forecast 20 years ago today, in which he seemed to scotch rumours of a hurricane, has gone down in broadcasting history. There's only one problem - that wasn't what happened.

 

In the early hours of 16 October 1987, winds reaching 122mph ripped across the south-eastern corner of England, taking the sleeping nation by surprise.

 

As dawn broke, 18 people had lost their lives and 15 million trees had been uprooted.

 

As journalists searched for reasons why the forecasters had failed to predict such an extreme and devastating event, it was not long before Michael Fish found himself in the eye of a media storm.

 

After all, we have been told, it was his 2130 forecast the evening before that highlighted how badly the Met Office had got it wrong.

 

"Earlier on today apparently," he began, "a woman rang the BBC and said she had heard that there was a hurricane on the way.

 

"Well if you are watching, don't worry there isn't," he said sagely, reassuring millions of viewers.

 

Yet just a few hours later, the worst storm since 1703 unleashed its fury.

 

Although it was Mr Fish, now 63, who retired in 2004, he says it is not his, but the nation's collective memory that is failing.

 

"I wasn't even on duty that night, it was Bill Giles," he explains, referring to one of his colleagues, "so I cannot claim any responsibility whatsoever."

 

Mr Giles was on the afternoon/evening shift and Ian McCaskill was on the night shift, he recalls.

 

"Those were the only two people involved and not me at all. I came in the next morning at 0430 to do Breakfast News and the morning broadcasts."

 

Mr Fish, tongue-in-cheek, refers to Bill Giles as "the guilty one", adding that it was something his former colleague "forgot to admit until after his retirement!"

 

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

15 October (morning)

Michael Fish tells viewers to 'batten down the hatches'

15 October (lunchtime)

Mr Fish delivers his infamous 'hurricane' forecast

15 October (evening)

Bill Giles' forecast focuses on heavy rain over UK

16 October (early hours)

Shipping forecast warns of gale force winds in the Channel

 

Lessons learned from storm

 

So what about the infamous "hurricane" forecast?

 

"That was some time before and it was referring to Florida and had nothing to do with the (UK) storm," he states.

 

"In actual fact my earlier broadcast, which I am sure never got recorded, actually said 'batten down the hatches because there is some extremely stormy weather on the way'.

 

"If that is not a good forecast, I am not sure what is."

 

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, clips of "that" forecast are available on the web, which Mr Fish thinks originated from somebody's personal video recording.

 

To be fair, after telling us all not to worry, he goes on to say: "Having said that, actually the weather will become very windy." But that part is rarely shown.

 

Return visit

 

For 20 years, he has been trying to put the record straight. He first tried shortly after the original broadcast, when the media attention was at its height. And he tried again in 2004, when he retired from the Met Office.

 

His efforts "were in vain as it turned out". Which makes it odd that he has taken the BBC up on an offer, by returning to our screens 20 years on from the Great Storm, to be a guest weather presenter. Why do it?

 

"[The BBC Weather Centre's manager], I think, had the idea of me returning to do one of the live bulletins," he says.

 

The veteran forecaster had already approached the manager because he wanted to make himself available to be interviewed by local radio stations.

 

It appears that after all these years of patiently and precisely trying to correct journalists' false recollections, he has realised that there may actually be a silver lining to the nation's clouded memory.

 

GREAT STORM TIMELINE

Great Storm's wind speeds

Five days before

Forecasters predict severe weather for Thursday or Friday

Few days before

Models suggest severe weather will only hit Channel and coast

15 October (afternoon)

Winds very light over UK; gale warning issued for Channel

15 October (evening)

Late TV forecast focuses on heavy rain over UK mainland

16 October (early hours)

Storm turns inland; emergency services are alerted

Recovering from the storm

 

"Craftily, I am trying to promote a book on the subject and I thought doing a round-the-houses with local radio would give me a good opportunity to indirectly plug the book because one of the major chapters was about the 1987 storm," he says.

 

"That was a good way of linking it and hopefully selling it."

 

The book, co-written by fellow forecasters Ian McCaskill and Paul Hudson, is a chronology of some of the UK's most extreme weather events.

 

So how does the storm to which he has become forever associated compare?

 

"It was severe, but not the severest. The 1703 storm was far more severe, so was 1990 in many parts of southern England," he replies.

 

He says the 1987 storm was so damaging because it struck when the trees still had many of their leaves.

 

"Whereas the 1990 storm was in the winter and although the wind was stronger, the damage was far, far less."

 

Although his appearances at the end of the Monday's One O'clock and Six O'clock news will be his first since retiring as a "broadcast meteorologist" in 2004, he will not be out of practice.

 

Since leaving the Met Office's payroll, he has been presenting the evening weather bulletins on BBC South East.

 

And after more than three decades of having to limit himself to the occasional brightly coloured jumpers or fish motif ties, he recently had the chance for a full costume and career change when he appeared in The Play What I Wrote.

 

But it may still be a little too soon to offer him the lead in Gone With The Wind.

:puke2: I remember this storm well. I was staying at my Nans in Essex and i remember everyone sitting in the dining room with no lights, just thunder, lightning & gale force winds crashing against the windows. I was only 8 but i remember my cousin rowing up & down the next road in a dinghy trying to get peop0le out of there homes and to somewhere safe as the local river had flooded amongst all the chaos. The next day there were trees down everywhere. Thought we were never gonna get home. Scary. :huh:

I'm on the south coast and It was four years but according to my parents lots of damaged happened to my area, roofs where blown straight off the beach flats that are close by and loads of the forest on the south downs wheres destroyed.

More than Manchester?

 

derby.... we didnt have the winds that the south did...

 

anyway... fish was RIGHT. "there isnt a hurricane coming", it WASNT a hurricane, it was hurricane force winds... a hurricane is a large very deep depression, the 'hurricane' of 20 years ago was only a 'normal' atlantic 'low'. it was a storm which just happend to have winds in access of 100mph on its southern side.... "hurricane force winds".

I was living in Notting Hill in west London at the time. I remember leaving the pub at 11.30pm and saying to my mate "I think it's going to be windy tonight" as the wind was picking up. I couldn't get to sleep because of the wind and when I left the house in the morning there were trees lying everywhere!

I was living right in the middle of London next to the PO Tower and the winds were so loud that night. Sounded like half of London was being carried away! Remember walking round town the next morning and the streets were green with all the debris.

I was living in Notting Hill in west London at the time. I remember leaving the pub at 11.30pm and saying to my mate "I think it's going to be windy tonight" as the wind was picking up. I couldn't get to sleep because of the wind and when I left the house in the morning there were trees lying everywhere!

 

 

Amazingly my memory is almost exactly the same as yours! I was living in Ladbroke Grove, near Notting Hill, and had been to the pub, got back as the wind was picking up. Mind you it didn't keep me awake - I slept right through it!

 

Managed to get to work eventually only to find very few people had made it. My immediate boss toook the 3 of us who had to lunch. So that was my storm - slept right through it and got a free lunch!

I live in the South East and we got the full force of it, back garden Fence all over the place, even the Chimney moved

Amazingly my memory is almost exactly the same as yours! I was living in Ladbroke Grove, near Notting Hill, and had been to the pub, got back as the wind was picking up. Mind you it didn't keep me awake - I slept right through it!

 

Managed to get to work eventually only to find very few people had made it. My immediate boss toook the 3 of us who had to lunch. So that was my storm - slept right through it and got a free lunch!

I think the pub I was in might have been in Ladbroke Grove! I can't remember the name of it other than it was a wine bar near to the 7 to 11.

 

Next door were getting some renovation work done at the time and part of their property was covered by plastic sheeting which was rustling all night long which is partly why I couldn't get to sleep. But by 2am the noise of the wind itself was extremely loud and then there was a massive gust of wind and the electricity went off! I think it was down for about 3 or 4 hours.

 

Getting to work the next day was fun, I only had to travel to Harlesden but it took well over an hour as trees and debris were lying everywhere and the usually reliable 52 bus was having problems getting around the roads!. Like yourself few of us actually made it into work and that was fun and games too - I was working as a home visits officer at the DHSS at the time and had to go and do a visit to a travellers site - which had been all but destroyed by falling trees which took out two caravans plus a couple more had blown over! It was utter chaos that day back at the office as we had hardly anyone to man the counters and had more than the usual amount of claimants visiting us as the postmen hadn't been able to get into work and it appeared that half of NW10 hadn't received their giros! So the staff we did have spent all day making emergency cash payments...

Edited October 17, 200717 yr by Robbie

well i dont really remember it because i was a baby at the time, i remember my mum telling me about it a few years ago, i dont think it effected us much tho but i'm not sure :unsure:

I do not remember the broadcast but I remember travelling further into Cheshire, a few weeks later and seeing a few toppled trees that still needed removing from the fields. I also remember the dent in the car that could have seen the death of a friend, when a tree branch just missed their car.

Didn't the guy who played Rene in Allo Allo get rather badly hurt in the storm?

yes grebo...

i remember it well i had just started dating a guy and it meant he couldnt come to visit me in hampshire. I got invited to a party instead had a brill time with my mates. I remeber it was a real mess outside with all the trees destroyed in the area.

Didn't the guy who played Rene in Allo Allo get rather badly hurt in the storm?

that happened during the January 1990 storm (it gets called the Burns Day / Night storm because it happened on January 25) which affected more of the country with more deaths too - if I remember, 47 people were killed as opposed to less than a dozen in 1987, simply because it happened during the day unlike the 1987 storm which was overnight.

 

that was my storm - slept right through it and got a free lunch!

 

Now that's not bad - sleep right through it and get lunch.

 

I don't remember much of it - mind you, I was 6 and lived in Edinburgh (Scotland was hardly touched).