Well, the last two days have been something else and Great Britain is still trying to recover from them.
Thursday saw the worst storm to hit the UK since 1990 with winds of between 75 and 95 miles per hour. At least 10 people died, buildings, fences and walls all over the country collapsed, as did thousands of trees., Air, road and rail travel was severely disrupted, especially as many, many lorries were just blown over by the gales. Power cuts were many, in our part of the country (East Anglia) at one stage 75,00 households were without electricity.
It was particularly horrible where we are although we personally were only slightly affected. We heard a clatter in the morning when the television arial was blown off the roof and was just hanging down in front of the window to the sitting room. The Husband quickly ran outside and disconnected the arial before the winds could blow it through the window - a real possibility given how strong the winds were. We also lost a few roof tiles, one of our fence panels on our back boundary blew out and two of our small conifers in the front garden, both about 3.5 feet high, are bent over. Fortunately we did not actually loose our electricity supply, although it was flickering on and off all day. The whole day was particularly unnerving, especially the winds and how helpless one feels in the face of uncontrollable nature.
The next day, Friday, the whole of Britain spent clearing some of the mess up, although I can imagine that some of the damage will take longer to clear up. The husband has managed to put back the loose fence panel, at least until we can replace it for one that isn't damaged. The water in the rivers is very, very high at the moment and the Husband came back from a walk in the afternoon to say that there is tree damage and trees down all over the place locally. I made the mistake of going out yesterday, not a good idea for me after any storm, and had an asthma attack. I'm feeling better now though.
The next task is to get the tv arial put back. The winds did not affect the satellite dish, though, so we still have access to tv channels.
5 comments:
I'm so glad to hear that you came through it safely! It was smart to disconnect the antenna. It could have caused a lot of grief. I'm so sorry to hear how many trees have suffered. A friend in SW Kansas sent pictures of an ice storm that hit her town, and easily half of the old, tall trees have either had significant loss of branches, or will have to be cut down.
I'm sure a storm swirls up loads of stuff that's bad for your astma. It's good to hear that the attack was short-lived.
Stay warm and safe!
Buffy
I'm with Buffy in being glad that you came through the storms in fine shape. Those aerials can be a trial in high wind. They would not normally go through a window; but, better safe than sorry. Sorry about your trees. I'm thankful your damage wasn't as bad as the storm damages in Missouri and Oklahoma from their storms.
Cop Car
I must admit that when a really bad storm hits Britain we have a lot of damage and disruption, even when as in this case the weather forecasters warned us a couple of days in advance that we would have bad winds and storms. The trouble is that despite our National obsession with the weather we are not used to the extremes suffered by many other countries, including the US. This was the worse storm since 1990 and we should be glad that we only get one like it every so often.
It wasn't nice to be in it, though, even though the damage was not nearly as bad as the one(s) CopCar is involved in clearing up.
The Husband thought that there was a possibility that the arial could have gone through the window as the winds were strong and in exactly that direction. Oh, and the Stepdaughter lives about 5 minutes walk from us and next door to he a pigeon house was compkletely demolished in the storm. I'm surprised we haven't seen more pigeons flying around since then.
Oh, my. Pigeon escapees hadn't occurred to me. Surely they come home?
CC
Grin. Probably. I just hope that they weren't in the pigeon house when it blew down. They certainly don't seem to be around here thankfully.
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