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And having chatted to my elderly father, he had been calling the two landlines all day and getting worried... When I suggested WhatsApp, he got a response immediately....
Winchester
According to my colleagues it was merely a breezy and wet day there, nothing particularly unusual.
As this storm is in the south, there is of course absolute blanket coverage of every wind gust on the BBC…
#rollseyes…
Watching the BBC news from parts of southern England, and particularly Jersey, most of the south-west and Wales got off fairly lightly, the central depression pressure registered the lowest November pressure in climate records. It seems very one-sided, the highest winds concentrated to the south/south-east. Jersey suffered terrible damage, entire roofs torn off walls torn down, incredible luck nobody was injured. It certainly looked like a tornado spawned and tore through part of the town, a not uncommon occurrence in a storm like that.
I have witnessed zero storm excitement in Fareham, Hampshire. Will I get some action tonight or has just passed us by?
Tornadoes are severe convective storms not extra-tropical cyclones
Yes, but the report is of an actual tornado as well as all the wind. It does rather look like one:
They can both occur within these complex disorganised systems but it is certainly not normal, nor expected
The SCS component is on the periphery of the main storm front (if it happens)
There was a tornado from the last storm in Sussex too:
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/23888858.investigator-describes-damage-caused-littlehampton-tornado/
Back from dog walking. Still bracing.
Apparently Jersey airport is shut, and there are no ferries tomorrow.
Anyone know if the weather is why the ECML is shut KX-Peterborough and Newcastle-Edinburgh?
National Rail banner at the top links to details of those closures. KX to Peterborough is damage to overhead power lines, may or may not have initially been due to weather. At Edinburgh it's a power failure.
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service-disruptions/huntingdon-20231102/
lots of flooding in the North East apparently
Jersey airport sustained 'substantial' damage. Think we mostly got lucky versus Channel Islands and north France. Though it wasn't far off West Bay and the caravan park at Freshwater / Burton Bradstock had to be evacuated during the event, which is not ideal. Still lots of water in very wet catchments so there is flooding to come but glad there hasn't been too many injuries reported.
Damage; how much is down to inappropriate, low grade building standards?
Building standards are not rigourously enforced but not all properties are maintained correctly, this can lead to increased damage when subjected to wind load, shaking from earthquake or flooding
There's also a phenomena of non-engineered losses e.g. where the building is sound but Derek left the window open, the wind ripped it off and then water ingress occurred and exacerbated the damage.
It will be interesting to see how/if building standards start to adapt as 'weather events' become more common and more severe. An area like the UK with such a lot of old housing stock could be in for a lot of pain.
We're having our storm damaged house rebuilt to a higher classification of wind loading than currently required in our region, because cyclones are expected to creep south. Hoping we don't have to ever test it though.
You're average Australian or US home is not very robust. European houses (not apartments) tend to be made from unreinforced masonry, less than 4 storeys high and have very heavy roofs fastened to the building.
There only adaptation measures I can think of now are for flood not wind.
The scientific consensus on the impact of climate change on extra tropical cyclones in Europe is that the increased signal is very small compared to the natural variability of the storm systems. However these events will more than likely get wetter in the future. In there past the winter windstorm events tended to be fast moving, high intensity, dry-ish events or slower moving, lower intensity but very wet, these patterns are changing
Yes, not easy to move robust houses out of flood prone areas.
I remember in the early 2000s my Mum couldn't get their house build finished in Devon because the EA insisted on better flood defences for the estate. Eventually they were satisfied - yet the place still floods relatively regularly and all residents on their road (except them by chance) have had bad inundation. What a stuff up.
Tornadoes are severe convective storms not extra-tropical cyclones
https://theconversation.com/tornadoes-in-the-uk-are-surprisingly-common-and-no-one-knows-why-209921
Yes, not easy to move robust houses out of flood prone areas.
Developers building large estates on floodplains, or not putting in appropriate remedial work like drainage ponds, plus paving over huge areas of land that would otherwise have absorbed the rainfall naturally and allowed it to soak away into the water table doesn’t help matters.
It still amazes me that new houses are being built without robust construction, thin brick walls with limited support and down south, no sarking timber under the roof covering. This means that when a single slate or tile slips, leaving a gap for the wind to get in, then the whole lot can begin to lift and you see huge chunks of tiled roof tearing off. Relatively easily prevented at the building stage by building with robust roof trusses, clad with timber sarking and then the slates/tiles. Good insulation standards are essential and seem well applied by why are so many houses still being built with a clear short term expected lifespan..? Rhetorical question; I know the answer lies just over there in the thread about corruption in UK politics...
Guernsey got away pretty lightly compared to Jersey. Airport will be open this morning once aircraft are repositioned. Ferries look to be taking a few more days to get back on schedule.
we lost a couple of tiles, some glass from one of our greenhouses and a bit of plastic from the other. Some of the housing association homes had roof/gable damage, most othere damage i have seen has been due to trees falling.
Lots of pics coming out of Jersey of missing roofs and collapsed walls.
Iirc building regs have changed for roofs to include more fixings . Both between the tiles and the batons.
No reason why each tile couldn't be individually screwed into the batons
Would take longer than the usual 1 X clout nail every 4 courses. Plus single tile repairs would mean lifting more tiles as they wouldn't prise up to allow insertion
@singletrackmind, are you saying that not every roof tile is nailed on..?
"Plus single tile repairs would mean lifting more tiles as they wouldn’t prise up to allow insertion "
This - I was very much glad when I self-repaired two tiles hit by a falling ridge tile that all I had to do when balancing up a ladder was to lift up the surrounding tiles, slide out the broken bits, slide in the two new ones and bang a clout nail in.
Yep
AFAIK and I'm not a roofer, no not every roof tile is nailed down. For slates it's different obviously as there's no lip to hook onto the next battern and different overlap patterns.
But for cast Marley tiles , in my limited experience, nope it's every 2nd or 3rd row, with the others relying solely on the pitch , overlap and weight to keep them up there
Very pleasant day in Hampshire, warm sun, light breeze...