Storm Ciarán part 2 - the aftermath.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Old thread filling up.

I'm afraid I get more irritated by those who love to post that they are NOT having a storm...
Ciaran affected the south of England...I'm not impressed by people well outside the yellow/amber areas saying " oh it's fine here".

Grrr....

But I am very grateful for OYBBK's posts.

So were the trains buggered last night?

I'm so sick of news not reporting stuff that's important.

we had no water last night, for about 14 hours I think, but I'm not sure if that's linked.

Hope everyone’s ok today.

I was lucky enough to squeeze on to the only train heading north from a chaotic King’s Cross last night, took me 5 hours to get home which is twice as long as usual but in the great scheme of things I’m grateful to have made it.

Plymouth to Penzance train line was out, but i think they managed to open as far as St Austell late yesterday.

South western railways still a bit so so. Lots of cancellations this morning. Probably lots of trains in the wrong place.

Just tagging @Needmoresleep because of my post upthread re property management company.

Posts saying where the storm isn't (yet?) are still useful posts @FuzzyPuffling On the last thread we had people from Devon who were experiencing torrential rain and wind, while others, also from Devon, were saying there was no sign of the storm where they were, posting within a few minutes of each other. And it can be useful info to work out where the storm has got to.

I'm in Co Durham, and not in Weardale. The geography here means we have less rain than most places, as much of it falls on the Lake District, Upper Weardale, the North York Moors, the Yorkshire Dales, the Cheviots and the uplands North of Newcastle, before the rain-bearing clouds even reach us. OTOH the North Sea affects our Summer weather by becoming high sea-fret. Most annoying for it to be hot, but with a white sky. Even worse if you ring your DM down South and she enthuses about her clear blue sky!

And it hardly ever thunders - which is a drag, as I love a good thunderstorm.

Trains in the storm areas were affected.

Entirely separately LNER (East Coast Mainline) trains were affected by port issues, nothing to do with the weather but resulting in an awful lot of disruption. Cancellations continuing today.

WTF is a port issue? That's meant to be power issue!

LNER are advising against travelling today https://www.lner.co.uk/travel-information/travelling-now/travel-alerts/

Edit to acknowledge crosspost!

South West had a trespasser on the line yesterday afternoon Woking direction - so that caused a lot of delays. Then they were all stopping at Bournemouth and not going onto Weymouth.

Our update. It appears that the water table rose so it was higher than our garage floor and and higher than the base of our lift shaft. The problem was as much about the heavy rain in the week before Ciaran as the storm itself bringing even more rain. The garage is more of less clear but the lift shaft is more contained so it might take weeks for the water to go. In my new (dictatorial) role my neighbours will have to use the stairs till I deem the lift safe.

It is a pain. The flat belonged to my parents and during lockdown it seemed sensible to speed probate up by buying out my brother. The building needed a lot of maintenance so my idea was to get involved and ensure that things happened, making a sale easier. Since then interest rates have gone sky high, the management company folded taking quite a lot of our money with it, and the sales market is weak. Then Ciaran. And the scheduled two hour train journey took five. Even so I feel less overwhelmed than I did a couple of days ago. Roof repairs will happen on Sunday and the lift will be inspected next week.

I think I am in love with the, very capable, builder.

I hope that things are getting easier for our Channel Island folk.

I was on one of those trains. First was cancelled, the second delayed, then the trespasser, then a slow train in front of us, then a wait for the guard to be relieved, then no relief guard, so a change to another train which went extremely slowly. Both trains belted out cold air. DH took pity on me and picked me up from the station.

Not a good week.

There's a heck of a difference between people in different parts of Devon commenting on their storm experience, (all within the warning zones) and people hundreds of miles north of the zones saying "it's fine here". Yes, you'd expect it to be.

I was hundreds of miles north. I didn't bang on about it, just mentioned it occasionally. You can't see a pattern of rainfall, or project a future storm path, without data on where it is and isn't raining, etc. It was useful to me to know about weather in the North of England, because that way I could see if the rain etc was* *heading towards me. All that geographic protection doesn't stop it tipping down here sometimes - we just get it last, and sometimes less

"it's fine here". Yes, you'd expect it to be.

Therefore it's worth knowing if expectations are holding up or not. Weather is hard to predict, and doesn't always do what we expect, cos chaos theory. Negative info has value. Science, innit?

Did you watch the Met animation anytime? Probably not, because you were in the thick of it. The storm was rotating anti-clockwise over the British Isles and France, it pretty much dropped water all over. Durham roads have had floods in the past few days. We expect them here now, we have saturated ground and a lot of run-off which pools in the main roads into floods at places known by us locals. Thank God not much wind, so no storm damage.

Ah well, it's lovely and sunny here now.

Oh you poor thing ! train delays are so frustrating

I was just hanging about in Waterloo waiting on delayed trains to arrive and then when it did had to wait on a driver.

...but the military poppy sellers were out in force in Waterloo ( in uniform) with the military Wives choir so was a more pleasant wait than normal!

We've had some lovely sunshine up here, too, today and enough of a breeze to help dry out the saturated brickwork on our house. It's rather pleasant after the past few weeks.

We have a yellow rain warning tomorrow for 19 hours, so I do hope that all those with wonky roofs from Ciaran are able to get at least a temporary repair today.

Jersey is still on clean up, altho slightly hampered by the wind and rain

Food wise still low levels of fresh fruit and veg and meat. The boat is stuck out at sea today till 5pm waiting for conditions to calm down

Been reading this thread - also from Jersey here, east of the island. Today trying to get into town from St Martin's was still fun - St Saviour's Hill and Wellington Road still blocked by fallen trees. (Guessing Beaulieu and DLS may not be open on Monday - Samares already declared to be closed on Monday, others TBD/TBC).

Had cause to go out west as well. I'm not sure that we haven't lost trees in the several 1000s, tbh. Even driving a short stretch of a mile back home I counted 40 trees down. I can't even imagine how it must feel for those made homeless on Thursday morning. We lost some fencing, but that's it. Our house is secure, no tiles missing etc. A lot to be thankful for.

Hoping all Jersey / Channel Island MNers are doing as well as they can this weekend, all things considered.

I'm in Jersey and Wednesday night was just awful. We are out on the eastern tip and were in the path of the tornado.

It was the most terrifying experience I have ever had.

We woke at midnight to screaming wind and glass shattering. Rushed downstairs to find many windows had blown through, the shed had entirely disappeared and out greenhouse a twisted mess. The farm next door had lost the entire side of one of its huge sheds.

We are slowing clearing up, but a walk yesterday revealed a row of 4 neighbouring cottages had their roof ripped off in its entirety.

Luckily no one was physically injured but we are all emotionally scarred from it

The flooding in Italy from Ciaran is insane, I didn't realise it had such a wide impact.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67306519

@SequentialAnalyst A couple of us at least mentioned management company issues. For me, yes we do pay into buildings insurance, so cost of damage will be able to be reclaimed via that. The cost of repairs I'm not so sure as the storm didn't actually cause the defects that led to the damage, it just created conditions where the water damage was particularly bad. I've been complaining about gutters discharging down walls and getting into flats since before summer, and one lady with very bad water ingress has been complaining about it for 6 weeks before this storm hit. The two issues/locations may be different/have different causes - we won't know until scaffolding goes up next week - but the first one is definitely due to defective workmanship on gutters. So there may be a claim there against some of the parties involved, but it's going to be painful and expensive if we do go the legal route, I'm sure.... But, once these emergency works are underway, I'll be turning my attention to leading that charge. It's taken all my energy to push them to act on these issues, I'm physically ill from the stress.

@Needmoresleep so glad you're getting things sorted and your neighbours are lucky to have you! I managed to push for emergency works by going to the mgmt company's office in person and refusing to leave until a plan was in place. The agent looking after our block turned out to be on annual leave on Thurs, without having mentioned it, which pushed me over the edge!!!

That sounds utterly horrendous Funny - sorry to hear about your ordeal.