Just come back from a drive to high Wycombe went near Langley and black parks, several trees down and black park is shut.

Closer to home little Britain is pretty bad too.

Thank you all for your recent posts and local reports, they are always appreciated.

Last night's storm was probably noteable for it's duration as much as anything else in London and The South East, and it was pretty much as predicted by the Met Office. Once the track of the storm had been determined it was clear that the south coast would see the strongest winds, and so it proved to be.

A gust of 109mph was recorded at the Needles Lighthouse, but that has to be put into perspective. That site is an extremely exposed location and far from typical. Gusts in excess of 100mph are recorded quite often there in the winter months.

More typically the maximum wind gusts along the South Coast from West Sussex to Kent were generally between 70-80mph last night. Not pleasant but not that unusual for a winter storm.

Further inland, the Met Office site at Heathrow recorded 10 straight hours of gusts in excess of 50mph between 7pm Friday and 4am Saturday, with the maximum peaking at 60 & 63mph between midnight and 2am. The roar of the wind was quite noticeable here in Northwood, but thankfully I haven't seen any reports of damage locally.

To try and answer SOT's question re 1987......I believe the maximum wind speeds recorded in London during that storm were 94-97mph, which is pretty phenomenal for an urban area. As far as I can tell from the various sources, 107mph was the maximum recorded that night, at Shoreham in Sussex. I remember that night well, but if memory serves, we had another major storm a couple of years later which occurred during the day ?

Well looking ahead, hopefully the weather will be calming down somewhat with no major storms on the horizon but further rainfall could still be an issue for areas already flooded. Folk in the affected areas do need to pay heed to the Met Office and Environment Agency websites for the time being.

Thanks as always for reading and posting. Moley

I

? Do our storms rolling thru the Gulf States heading north impact you weeks later, if so I can give you the heads up on whats coming.

I was speaking to an ex colleague who is a specialist advisor to the fire service and has been in Somerset for 4 weeks, before being moved to Thames Valley in the last week. His stories show that the media are so busy politicizing the floods and talking up global warming, they have missed some important facts:

A positive fact: The coordination of the fire service response has worked really well. Fir example, the movement of fire appliances and personnel across the UK is almost unprecedented and is only exceeded by the movement of 1000s of fire crew and kit during the blitz in 1940. For example, a couple of days ago, as local Berkshire and surrounding crews were engaged in flood work, fire cover for Maidenhead was being provided by an appliance and crew from Merseyside

Meanwhile, a not-so-positive fact: London's fire brigade withdrew 27 pumps from front line service in Oct/Nov 13 to be held in reserve for use during strikes & manned by specialist contingency crews. Despite the appliances can pump collectively more than 105,000 litres a minute, all of that kit is still in mothballs at a TA centre in south London and no emergency fire crews have been deployed.

I hope that lessons can be learned after this event

It's so often the case that frontline staff perform miracles against all the odds SOT. Unfortunately it's the highly paid muppets in charge who trot out the well worn mantra that " lessons will be learned ". All the evidence suggests otherwise.

Not satisfied with just cutting frontline staff jobs, the Environment Agency are now apparently selling off vital equipment at bargain basement prices : Whats the betting that somewhere like the Netherlands buy them cheap and lease or rent that equipment back to us at a profit and frankly, who can blame them ?

http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/hot ... 99.article

The Dutch know a thing or two about low lying land and flood defences, but apparently our government initially rejected their offers of help, but it seems they have now performed a swift u-turn. Too little too late once again :

http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Gove ... z2tQdeoAei

Apologies for getting all political again but really......you have to question the lack of long term planning and projects in this country of ours.

Moley

How ironic is this? A guy hospitalized by a advertising hoarding being blown down on him.

The advert was for the NHS suggesting elderly people see their GP if they are "under the weather"

http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/MAN-H ... story.html

I agree entirely with SOT.

We were extremely fortunate that whilst these fire crews were deployed elsewhere nothing else major happened. Fire crews need to be available when required and if that means time spent at the station waiting then so be it.

All this nonsense about call about and arrival times not being affected just doesn't wash

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Lets be careful out there !

Well is it nice to post something positive about the weather this weekend, Saturday was a fantastic spring like day, which enabled me to get out the old rusty two wheeler and pootle off down the canal to Cranford Park.

The canal was surprisingly free of mud and puddles but the same couldn't be said for Hammondsworth moor (Saxon lake end) as this was still impassable. We did however manage to come out under the m4 into donkey lane without too much trouble.

What's the next few days going to bring I wonder

I stuck my nose out of the window and still considered it too cold to go out and wash the car.

has been a bit drier though

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Lets be careful out there !

Thanks for the recent reports BG and Kremmen and apologies for my lack of updates lately. Health issues.....sorry.

I have tried to introduce a new member to this topic but it seems he is having problems registering which is a shame, not least because he is far more knowledgable than me on weather related matters. Persevering though.

Moley