The Great Storm of 1987
November 21, 2023
By Paul Homewood
I came across this BBC 6 o’clock News report on the day of the Great Storm of 1987.
I always find these on the spot reports illuminating:
At the time of the storm, my sister and family were temporarily living in a caravan in Essex, having recently returned from living in South Africa.
The first I knew of the storm here in Sheffield was when my mum rang up in tears when I was still in bed! She was understandably worried about my sister.
My first reaction to my wife when she answered the phone was “What storm – what’s she on about?” And then put my head back under the covers!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Those were the days. “Damage running into millions of pounds”.
Dead trees everywhere for the “soft southerners”. I ended up riding a dirtbike into Central London on the morning of the Great Storm; travel by car was a lost cause.
I lived near Brands Hatch at the time, astonishingly I slept though it. When I got up I thought, bit windy out, then, another bloody power cut. (which the village was plagued with at that time) Opened the front door, no porch,I found that smashed to bits into what was left of the garden shed Gosh I thought (well not those words as such) somethings gone on here. The drive though the lanes to work in Crayford rapidly became impossible, so I gave up.luckily for me I suffered no other issues. I spent the next couple of days helping a friend and his JCB to clear some of the roads.
On the plus side I didn’t buy any firewood for 5 years and got a nice chainsaw out of it.
Interesting that in 1987 the BBC put the storm in the context of historical events.
We lived in Sussex on the Downs; it was impossible to sleep. I watched the branches of a large lone oak tree twisted by the wind all facing our house; it stood firm. Next morning was sunny and calm but the roads were all blocked, no power, our ancient beech woodland flattened, devastation everywhere. The air was filled with a beautiful scent that I realised was tree sap; an unforgettable morning.
I remember the complete silence next morning, it was absolutely still and no bird song whatsoever.
I was on night shift at Mortlake brewery
It was quite a night.
” Mortlake brewery ”
A lot of beer history at Mortlake brewery, but probably gone now.
It probably was, after fretslider’s shift! 😀
Yes! The “It was quite a night.” was probably meaningful …
I was working on a wind turbine on the Isles of Scilly at the time. When I got to the site hut to start work the phone was ringing. It was head office in London very concerned. Told them I had no idea what they were talking about!
May I ask where this wind turbine was on the Isles of Scilly in 1987?
Mount Todden. The desalination plant now occupies the site.
Was it something like this
or more substantial?
I remember them randomly scattered round the countryside when I was a lad
Hi eromgiw, I genuinely had no idea that such (relatively for the time) large grid connected wind turbines existed especially not VAWT in 1987. That really must have been very innovative for the time. Thanks for the info.
To glenartney, I think it was actually quite a seriously high tech beast like this.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Major-components-of-Musgrove-rotor-49_fig16_26799978
Interesting engineering to say the least.
Is this it?
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6414430
Amazing bit of kit!
Scilly wasn’t connected to the National Grid back then, it had it’s own diesel generators and an incinerator that generated power. Ironically, the day we finished commissioning the turbine the govt agreed to pay for a grid connection to the mainland. The turbine was dismantled a couple of years later when the link was established.
@ Is this it?
I wonder if the Hereford is still there!
Interesting, thanks Ray and eromgiw
Out of curiosity can you recall what the max capacity of this wind turbine was and was it connected to the local grid – if so what effect did it have on the diesel generators?
Look for VAWT-260 on this page: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032118308153 More here: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/WE.-00127-83
My experience of the storm was ‘interesting’. I was in a new job and had to move from the north to Wiltshire. We had sold our house in the north and bought a house in Wiltshire, but our move was timed for after the storm.
I was living in a hotel in the south, but on that day I had to visit a client in Sussex. I drove down in the afternoon to a hotel the admin had booked for me. I arrived late having stopped for dinner. When I got there, the car park was full so I parked under the American-style canopy in front of reception. I went to bed.
When I awoke the next morning, there was no electricity, no lights and a cold shower. I went to breakfast and part of the hotel roof had crushed many cars in the car park, but mine was okay saved by the canopy! Breakfast was simple – eggs and bacon cooked on one of those burners designed for cooking at table. Only one guy there, apparently the head waiter who lived in, trying to feed 50 people.
No TV but there was a radio in the restaurant. I ate, paid my bill and set out to the meeting. It was chaos with trees and fences and detritus everywhere. I got to the venue to be told the guy I was meeting had had a beech tree fall on his house. So I set off to check our new house in Wiltshire. It took five hours for what should have taken a few at most. The wreckage was unbelievable. Our new house was okay although a few tiles were off the roof. As it was Friday, I decided to drive up north to home, which took a further eight hours.
The ‘interesting’ bit – I slept through the whole thing!!!
Can you imagine, if that storm happened today, BBC would be broadcasting MMGW doom and gloom 7×24 for weeks!
And yet, BBC, here we are, still enjoying a well-balanced climate.
I was flying back from Brussels to Manchester that evening. My colleagues refused to fly. I sat at the back of the plane and it was a very bumpy ride.
I flew into Heathrow at 0530 on the Friday morning at the back of a Saudia 747. I remember it was really bumpy on the approach over East London and once we landed the windows on the airbridge were blown out and they couldn’t open the luggage hold for several hours. Later flew sideways to Cornwall on a Brymon Dash 7 . A few days later I drove from Cornwall to West Sussex and the damage started just to the east of Salisbury. Further west it was just a normal gale.
One of my most vivid memories was driving back home in the late evening along the Elham Valley road which runs SSW to NNE – exactly the track the storm locally was following. I was overtaken by one of those red and white tent cages from a BT site doing probably over 50mph.
I was woken up by the racket, and looked out the window to see branches being blown UP our hill! When I set off for work (telecoms) the road was blocked by a large fallen tree, but some contractors working nearby were already removing it with a digger. When I got to the depot it was soon decided to throw any appointments out the window, and just “Hit” one area after another, to save unnecessary travel. The next day I visited a customer, in a fairly secluded riverside spot, who was completely unaware of the storm until he tried to go to work. It literally “Blew Over” him, as he had high ground to the south – from whence it came. It took about a week before we got everyone back on, and that included help from gangs of engineers drafted in from other parts of the country…
Dave, down in East Kent my landline and electricity supply (off the same poles) were down for 11 days. The engineering crew who finally restored service were from the Republic of Ireland – a really nice bunch who got their rewards down the local pub (where they were staying) that night courtesy of me and several other grateful neighbours.
I was on overhead construction for BT at the time, got sent from the NE to Sevenoaks and around Ashdown Forest to restore the overhead cables. It was definitely devastated, but interestingly I read a report 20 years later claiming the unmanaged Forests had regrown more strongly than the managed ones.
Completely off topic,
I watch “Pointless” on an afternoon while I’m having a brew after the school run and the grandchildren are having a drink and biscuit. I’ve noticed that Climate Change has reared its ugly head a few times in recent weeks.
It did again this week with a question about activists and names. Thunberg etc. It pleased me that Ed Hawkins* was a pointless answer, the only bright spot of that round. I suspect virtually every viewer has forgotten his name again
*This guy
https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2018/warming-stripes/
Your have remind me of this film made by CEGB – “RIDING THE HURRICANE” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHP_tjTJQBM
As it made me think about how a partial black start would work for Southern England today since we have we have reduced the system inertia requirements to accommodate wind, solar and HVDC interconnectors (does anyone know what much effect the French interconnector going down had on what happened in 1987) that makes stopping a collapse harder and god knows how a black start will work but it will take longer than the partial blackstart we had in 1987 as most of the generation used then to blackstart has being demolished.
We really need an public inquiry which can compel witnesses lead by chartered electrical engineers & forensic accountants to review:
1 – the aims of the climate change act – if the whole point was to
replace fossil fuel energy with like for like non co2 emitting alternatives (No one honestly believes parliament intended to reduce peoples living standards)
why wasn’t a large scale (40GW+) replacement using nuclear fission using existing reactor designs investigated especially as new natural gas CCGTs were clearly being built at the time to replace the capacity of magnox reactors that had closed & gas would clearly end up replacing the AGR generation when they close if nothing was done. Then we have the Dutch HVDC link converter station being next to a running coal power station which seem to be ignored when it come to Co2 emissions.
Why do we have 28+ GWe wind capacity & are the direct and indirect subsidies for renewables value for money or unnecessarily
regressive to people on low incomes compared to the alternatives? Why are subsidise linked to generation when helping with the capital cost would be a more rational approach for the tax payer.
Also why was electricity from nuclear always subject to the Climate Change levy when cogeneration used to be except before the levy was turned in to a general stealth tax?
2 – the Secretary of State and the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority has complied with their duties under the Electricity Act 1989 and if any politicians or civil servants made any decisions they financially benefited from especially if a reasonable would have made a different decision the potential for a misconduct in a public office prosecution. We already know about the Renewable Heat Incentive or Cash for Ash scandal in Northern Ireland – I want to know if the people who set up net metering & the solar PV feed in tariff personally benefited from it.
As the EPR was clearly the worse choice of the available options based on the cost & the delay in Finland especially with the UKs history with problematic nuclear designs I.e AGR see Dungeness B when I would have made more sense to instead just continue with the PWR design used for Sizewell B although personally I would choose the CANDU as we don’t seem to have the heavy forging capacity for pressure vessels for PWR or BWR in the UK. We than have the UAE who started their new build at the same time as us as well as creating a nuclear power sector from scratch with a language barrier who looked at the EPR but decided the South Korean PWR was a better bet.
There are many duties worth investigation from Electricity Act 1989 Section 3A here is a small sample:
Those interests of existing and future consumers are their interests taken as a whole, including— (b)their interests in the security of the supply of electricity to them – There is no rational reason why embedded generation isn’t reported in real time and controllable by the electricity system operator to prevent unnecessary low frequency load shedding see May 2008 & to protect the distribution network especially the underground cables as these are planned based on diversity factor where it presumed that home in the same street would not all demand (let alone generate) large amount of electricity at the same time. As well a black start plan that isn’t wishful thinking.
• “the need to secure that all reasonable demands for electricity are met” – do we have enough generating capacity to run all those heat pumps? Are there plans to build enough to meet our equivalent instantaneous natural gas & heating oil demand for an unusually cold winter e.g 1947 or 1963 – https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news-archive/2018/gas-consumption-during-the-beast-from-the-east-how-the-local-gas-system-kept-us-warm
• “to secure a diverse and viable long-term energy supply” Dangerous dependency on just in time natural gas since most of the CCGT in GB unlike the island of Ireland don’t have the onsite fuel (was this reviewed when the coal power stations closed?)
• Allowing fuel secure nuclear capacity to close without fuel secure replacement,
• Allowing electricity generation to be dependant on natural gas without increasing gas storage compared to neighbouring countries (3 months)
• Allowing wind and solar to be connected to grid based on yet to be invented storage, no real world example to prove this is feasible and the weakening of existing standards (e.t system inertia requirements). As well as plan to address their shorter life compare to hydro and thermal power station.
” partial black start would work for Southern England today ”
Other posters will have greater technical knowledge than me:
For southern England, Sizewell B has a black start capability. To my limited knowledge, some OCGT and some CCGT can offer black start, although will the gas supply be pressurised?
Although not in southern England, black start capability is one of the key features of Dinorwig. Presumably electricity from Dinorwig can be transmitted to southern England if the grid still has some functionality,
Although not in southern England, Heysham has a black start capability. Presumably electricity from Heysham can be transmitted to southern England if the grid still has some functionality,
Paul, have you seen this?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/22/snp-council-floodates-delay-homes-swamped-damage-storm/
The storm date was evidently 16OCT1987. That day the Sea Isle City tanker was hit by a cruise missile. There was a 108-point break in the stock market ($0.5 trillion). This was just as Reagan, Biden, McConnell and Speaker Jim Wright were requiring feds to get pee-tested or be fired, and the omnibus “Drug Abuse” bill with mandatory minimums, asset forfeiture and was wending through Congress. The Crash was worse than the August 1932 banking crisis Crash.
This storm was obviously caused by CO2 and global warming.
You see, all that CO2 output by China in the 2010s and 2020s preemptively warmed the atmosphere in the 1980s, causing the storm. CO2 is, after all, capable of anything – as you know. Time travel is just one of many miraculous attributes of this sacred and globally worshipped gas.
R