Memories of the Great Storm of 1987

[January24]

Do you remember it? Where were you?

I always referred to it as a hurricane but apparently it was actually a cyclone.

I was a young teacher in London in a shared house and I thought it was the end of the world! We got a week off from it though. I remember ringing my parents in Wales the day after to say I was fine and not to worry and they laughed as they hadn’t even had a storm where they were!

That is a lovely way of looking at it

I was preteen. I remember standing out in the street of our tiny village with my dbro and dm, we were all jumping as high as we could and seeing how far the wind would push us along mid air. It was great, even my dm was joining in 😁

@Fairysteps11 hey birthday twin!

Worked London, lived Herts/Essex borders. Barely made it home as overground trains were all cancelled but the tube was still working.
(had a lift from my uncle for the last part of the journey as we didn't actually live near a Tube station.) storm continued to worsen overnight and the next morning the village was cut off by fallen trees. Trains still weren't running.
When I returned to work the day after I was really annoyed to learn that people who had managed to get to work on foot were praised to the skies for their dedication, loyalty etc even though they lived in central London and I lived 30 miles further north. And did I mention the village was cut off?
Others including me were criticised and basically called workshy. Still rankles.

I just started work dealing with insurance claims. The phones were going crazy!

Living near Croydon then. Ds was 6 weeks old. Nervy first time mum. I left him home with dh for my first evening out with friends. Felt anxious about going out for the evening then made worse by the weird windy atmosphere and kind of yellowy haze to the night sky. Safely returned home later, then woken at 3am'ish by roof tiles moving and general mayhem. Ds slept through it all! I remember it very very well.

I was 8, DBro was 5, we both slept through it.

Our garage collapsed, trees down everywhere, our roof was damaged. Car was written off inside the garage by falling bricks.

School roof collapsed, none of the classrooms were usable for months. We had a few weeks off school, and then were in portacabins for the rest of the year. We got a load of chopped up logs stacked up to play on in the playground (they were explicitly there to play on, ridiculously dangerous in retrospect because they weren’t secured at all - you’d run along them and they’d roll so you fell off).

I don't remember it being too bad where I was ( east Midlands). I was a young student nurse working a night shift and only realised anything was amiss when a row of empty plastic urinals flew off a windowsill where the window had been left slightly open !

Was 9 and lived just outside Brighton, can remember really daft things.

The houses had no front garden really so cars were parked really close to house, in the middle was a green we used to play on was v strict no car parking but knowing roof tiles could fall and hit the cars all the dads moved the cars onto the green in really orderly fashion.

Also we were end terrace and had pretty big back gardens and every fence panel came down except the back gate which remained intact, so for weeks after if we were in the garden my dad would approach and despite us seeing him knock at the gate and wait for us to open it and we found it the absolute funniest thing.

also remember a tree coming down in the park and landing right across the football goal blocking it, everyone called it Chris Woods a professional goalie at the time

I didn't live far from you and I remember my dad coming into my room (I was 6) and telling me to look out the window at the colour of the sky.. I remember it being yellow too.

I'll never forget the sight of him being physically blown away by the wind. Haven't seen him since. RIP Bernard x

Seriously @IrreversableBrainDamage ?

In the aftermath, the utter devastation at Wakehurst Place where 60% of the tree collection was lost.

I remember the tree loss seen from the road at Leonardslee seen a few week later when I visited Sussex. Thought of it when I finally visited there last summer.

I was 14 - I remember my CDT teacher complaining that a tree had come down in his garden. And of course the furore over the previous night's weather forecast.

I remember travelling down to London by train a month after the storm and being amazed by all the trees that were still lying around. We then walked through Kings Cross station which was very eerie and no one spoke. It was two weeks after the fire. I still equate the two events.

Was,that the storm where someone rang in to The Weather man Michael Fish and warned him about it coming and he dismissed it or did I have a pipe dream.

I was a student nurse just shy of qualifying working a night shift in Kent . The power kept going out and every time it did the hospital emergency generator kicked in and every buzzer on the ward (30 beds) went off , we spent all night just going round turning buzzers off . Then in the morning hardly anybody turned in for the day shift so I was stuck there until about 10-11 O’clock . When I did get home we had to sort out loads of fencing that had come down so that we could get our horses out in the fields , and the roof blew off our hay store .

That’s the one.

I was 18 living on the coast in Essex. We had a large window to the ground in our lounge wind blew that in and remember coming down the stairs to see leaves swirling round the lounge I thought I was dreaming
Our chimney came halfway through our roof and remember my dad saying stay where you are nobody move
Eventually we decided we would be safer to go next door so in the middle of the night attempted to go out the back gate remember my dad struggling to keep the gate open with the force of the wind and him putting his full weight against it and he was a big man
The force of the wind caused his glasses to blow off his face and land somewhere half way down the garden
We lived in a close and the houses on the outside edge of the close had brick walls separating their gardens from the road the fancy ones with holes in them from the pattern of the bricks nearly every single one was flattened
I didn't make it into work but I worked in a high rise building in the next town but those that did said the whole building was swaying and they could feel it moving
Been nervous of wind ever since never forgot it

I live in Sussex and just googled it, it's crazy the damage the storm caused, I lived opposite Abbey Wood's at the time and remember the trees being everywhere. 15 million trees fell that night.

I remember it well. I was 14 and in deepest darkest Kent and the damage everywhere was quite incredible. One of my friends mums was on the front page of the the local paper, the KM.... 'Margaret and her mangled Metro' after a tree fell on her car in the storm

I shared a flat in Stockwell south London. Slept through it. Woke up to massive trees felled in the back garden and walked to work in Central London. Surreal.

A hurricane (or cyclone) are a specific weather phenomenon which the storm didn't meet, even though the winds were hurricane force.

I went to school (2.5 miles on foot) as mum didn't believe in having time off, no power at home so couldn't check the radio for school closures. School was closed (no power) but they did make us hot chocolate (presumably the gas was working) before sending us home

It was a rough old year 1987. The Herald of Free Enterprise sank, Kings Cross tube station caught fire and then most of Kent was flattened by a massive storm.

I was living in the Midlands. It was a blowy night but nothing out of the ordinary. I went to work without seeing or hearing the news (as you could in those days!). About 11am I got a call from my normally calm and rational DM who lived in Portsmouth and was very upset that I hadn't phoned to check on her. She had spent the night in her basement thinking her house was about to come crashing down around her.