One year anniversary of Storm Eunice

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

A year ago today, storm Eunice hit much of England and Wales, bringing widespread travel disruption, power cuts and trees down everywhere. It was the storm that shredded part of the roof of the 02.

I was wondering what your memories are are of the storm?

My area wasn't too badly hit. There were a lot of fallen trees, generally cleared away from roads by a lot of good samaritan tree surgeons.

My main memories were of spending the day flitting between MN (warning and updating), weather models and the news while all the time listening to those long howls of wind which would start off in the distance, before arriving where I was, turning all the air into violent wind. It was frankly a bit nuts.

What do you remember?

Of course Eunice was not the only storm that week. Dudley preceded it on the 16th and Franklin arrived on the 21st. Forecasting and warning teams must have been absolutely exhausted by the end of the run of storms.

This winter, we've only had one named storm: Otto, which was named by the Danish Met Office, affected large parts of the Ne and Scotland yesterday.

www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/learn-about/uk-past-events/interesting/2022/2022_01_storms_dudley_eunice_franklin_r1.pdf

yes lots of trees down
we had to go into work and colleagues were very upset that they had to travel to work, otoh the worst of it was due to be between 9.30 and 4.30
the metal poles, are they mobile poles? were swaying

we had family for a meal but had a power cut and had to decamp to ds house.

Watching that big jet bloke compulsively! Seeing the planes landing in such winds was quite something!

oh i enjoyed the jet videos

I'm in Scotland and iirc Dudley was worse for us. I remember starting a flightradar thread and lots of us watching impressive take off and landings on big jet tv. We're a bit more used to strong winds in Scotland so it perhaps isn't as memorable. Yesterday we had gusts of 98mph recorded

I'd forgotten about the Big Jet bloke! There's some highlights here.

Yes you are right @liveforsummer Dudley was worse for you. It was pretty disruptive.

I also remember a particular poster was going on holiday from an area very affected at the time and we were all holding our breaths hoping she'd get there - she did

We had alot of damage to our house - although realtively sheltered. Chimney pots down' our dining room window pane sort of exploded (while the Dcs and I were homeschooling there); and some of our porch collapsed.

DH who is a DIY-obsessive has insisted on fixing all this himself. Which means nothing in the real world and is currently a source of much argument. (The window was fixed and that is it).

Oh no @WiltingLobelia. That doesn't sound good!

It's all liveable with- but deeply irritating.

I really appreciated your Storn Eunice threads at the time OYBBK. I was refreshing madly.

i remember watchign bigjet tv and there was one jet that landed and took off again!

We had a huge tree down that caused about £20k of damage. It took us months to sort out. We still have a fair bit of the tree to chop up. It'll keep us warm next winter!

I feel bad that I wasnt able to warn more about Otto. It didnt look too bad until the night before, but I wasnt available to take a good look at what was going on.

Ouch @eurochick ! I hope that insurance was able to take care of that.

Getting turfed out of the Tower of London because it was too windy

We were pretty lucky: the greenhouse was obliterated but the house and trees were OK. I was just thinking about the fact this winter hasn't had the same high winds as last year by a long way, and it's been cooler too - lots of frosts. I read that the cold is good news for blossom - any other predictions or conclusions to be drawn from a winter like this @OhYouBadBadKitten ?

Our neighbours lost most of their roof, they still haven't fixed it which beyond annoys me because I have to look at it out of my window every day

I have a rather satisfying storm prep checklist and emergency box I go through whenever there's a storm or bad weather forecast, other than losing a section of fence, we did great

We got a nice reminder with another storm in NE Scotland and no power again

Prepared this time though we have log burner for heat and a generator for power so we have been fine this time around.

Being annoyed that they closed the school. Choose to communicate that at about 8pm the night before. Que then having to drive ds to grandparents as we both had to work only for the storm to be no more than a windy day where we lived

It was our wedding day… we spent the lead up terrified of our guests not being able to make it (we lost 7 to transport/storm related issues) or suppliers would cancel after already being a year delayed due to Covid! We had spent 2 weeks self isolating and terrified that any of our closest family and friends would miss it due to Covid! I NEVER expected the weather to cause even more stress!

A power line ended up coming down in the church yard meaning we struggled to get into church for the rehearsal and they had to clear it for the wedding to ahead. It was SO SO SO stressful. The headlines were saying not to travel, we had 40 odd people already on their way from Scotland to the South Coast, I didn’t want anyone getting injured, at one point our venue and the hotel they were staying in lost power.

We totally paired back our expectations to those who could make it arriving safely, us ending up married and all our guests having safe warm shelter! The church and venue pulled out all the stops and we ended up having a fab day, cosied up INSIDE!

Ironically the day we would have got married a year previously, had we not postponed due to Covid lockdowns, was blue skies and glorious. I said on that day, I bet I’ll not get this weather next year!