a hurricane in a teacup

With much of Britain recovering from the effects of three storms – Dudley, Eunice and Franklin – within ten days and Storm Gladys about to arrive, it seems appropriate to have some up-to-date thoughts on the time when we England experienced a hurricane. Or did we experience one? After the ridicule that poor Michael Fish, the weatherman, had to endure after he proclaimed in 1987 that “Britain doesn’t have hurricanes” only for the nation to wake up to find itself flattened, the forecasters have avoided using the ‘H’ word. Instead we have storms that are now named in the same way as hurricanes. Even more recently still, we are told we have ‘red alert’ storms. So, were these latest storms hurricanes or in reality were they, as my late father would have said, “just a bit of a blow?”

I wrote the thoughts below many years ago when pondering on the English Hurricane and the later 1990 storm. That wasn’t officially a hurricane either but did far more damage – hurricane-like damage, in fact. The only thing that this and these latest storms prove is that the debate hasn’t moved on very much over the intervening years…

The dangerous work of reconnecting electricity continues through the night

English people constantly talk about weather. It’s in our makeup, our genes – we can’t possibly walk past someone, even a total stranger, without saying something about it. We can’t help it, no matter how much we realise that the person isn’t that interested (or, for that matter, even if they don’t speak English, when we madly gesticulate skywards). We rattle on about too much rain, too little rain, too much sun, no sun, cold for the time of year, how warm it is. So, in the spirit of being a true Englishman, despite my part-Polish ancestry, I’m just going to mention that we had a fantastic sunset in the secret valley a couple of days ago.

I think the reason we may behave like this is because English weather is nearly always gentle. The landscape that makes up England is beautiful and can be dramatic but not in the way of so many other countries. Take the USA, for example. Where’s our Grand Canyon, our towering redwoods, our Rocky Mountains, our Great Plains and our Niagara Falls? We have them in miniature and, perhaps, that is just as well as we are such a small country. And likewise, our weather: we have heatwaves, we have floods, we have blizzards. But they are rarely anything truly spectacular (except to those poor people affected by them, of course). And so when we were told by the weather men in 1987 that reports of a hurricane were completely exaggerated, we believed them totally. And despite the fact that much of the country was hit hard by it when it arrived, my part of the Chiltern Hills where I lived at the time was not much affected, even though it is one of the most wooded parts of the country.

The night in January 1990 was different. This time we had winds, whilst not as severe as three years earlier, which created total havoc with the already weakened root systems of the trees. Great swathes of the magnificent beech woods that are the very heart and soul of the Chilterns were flattened in a couple of hours. I lived at that time in the middle of one of these woodlands and am frequently reminded that, as the rest of the world cowered in their beds and the trees came crashing down all around our house, I woke up to say “a bit windy out there” before falling asleep again. As dawn broke the true damage to the landscape (but fortunately not our home) could be seen.

It is now over thirty years since that storm and the woodands have been transformed. Those of us that remember the 200 year old beech know that the majority are gone and, in their place, are new trees of mixed species. It will be many years before the magnificence of the woods return but they are healing. This photo below is taken from the same spot as the one above. Some of the biggest old stumps have been left, too difficult to move – time has hardly changed their appearance apart from their ‘roof’ of mosses.

One of the unforeseen benefits of the hurricane is the increased amount of light reaching the woodland floor, for beech trees cast a dense shade where little can grow, other than where the canopy is lightest. Apart from the view to the valley below, which was unseen before, many wild flowers are better now than ever. Roll on April when we can see the blue carpet of tens of thousands of bluebells disappearing into the distance.

Oh! And I nearly forgot to say, the weather today is a mix of sunshine, cold winds, rain and sleet. Don’t forget to tell the next person you meet!