Hurricane Low Q–The Storm That Devastated Glasgow in 1968
By Paul Homewood
One of the worst storms to hit Scotland in living memory was what they called Hurricane Low Q, which 50 dead in its wake in January 1968.
It was not, and had not been, a hurricane of course, as the time of year might indicate!
Here’s an account of it written in 2019:
The 1968 storm which reeked absolute devastation and chaos on Scotland focused its destruction particularly on the City of Glasgow. It claimed 20 lives immediately – nine of which in Glasgow – and a further 30 lives of the men repairing the damage in the aftermath. Often denoted as ‘The Great Storm’ or Hurricane Low Q, the blast has been described as Central Scotland’s worst natural disaster since records began, leaving 2,000 Glaswegians homeless, 300 homes completely destroyed and a further 70,000 damaged.
In total, the gale affected 250,000 homes. Many families had to live with make-shift tarpaulin roofs for an abnormally long time whilst hospitals were asked to give mattresses to those who lost their homes and were forced to bed down in local schools.
It was in the early morning hours of Monday 15 January that Hurricane Low Q moved easterly from the Atlantic and raged its way up the River Clyde. Peak gales topped at 140 mph and tore down power lines in its path, leaving the whole city in darkness. The typhoon was also responsible for sinking seven ships and setting an oil rig adrift. 8,000 hectares of forestry and over 1,000 of mature trees were destroyed and downed.
A Glasgow police spokesman at the time said that it was ‘absolute havoc’ in the city, lampposts bent, and mounds of earth, stones and rubble built up around the city.
The storm cost millions, totalling at a mere £30 million (£516 million in today’s day in age). Before the disaster hit, many of Glasgow’s housing estates were in extremely poor condition and due to the killer winds, half of Glasgow’s 140,000 council houses were damaged.
The then Europe’s tallest flats were evacuated by tenants as they shook violently and ‘swayed back and forth’; their trademark chimney heads filled the streets. Many locals saw whole buildings collapse whilst the storm was compared to the wind speeds of the Lothar Cyclone in Paris in 1999, which saw 110 fatalities.
Officials in Glasgow said that the destruction that was caused was similar to that of the German bombings in World War II. It was on the 16th January that 150 troops from Edinburgh came to help in the clean up – the immediate aftermath showed identifiable tracks suggesting a tornado-type storm similar to the twisters found in the American mid-west.
Despite the absolute pandemonium that was caused, there was little media coverage of the event along with little support from Government. Labour lent an interest-free loan of £500,000 to the city – expecting it to be paid back in full once the £30 million pound worth of damage was renovated.
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Although there was talk of a “tornado type outbreak”. the Met Office report made clear the storm was widespread. Winds of 90 kts in Glasgow equate to 104 mph:
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Note the reference to “storm force”. In those days the Met Office did not play fast and loose with meteorological terminology as they do now, calling everything depression to pass our way a “storm”. When they talked of storms, they meant storm force, as defined by the Beaufort Scale; average winds of 55 mph and over. Their summary for January showed that storm force winds covered a large swath of central and southern Scotland, as far south as Carlisle, even at low lying sites.
Gusts exceeded 100 mph at many low level sites as well in Scotland, for instance at Prestwick, Eskdalemuir. Leuchars, Midlothian and Renfrew. Even as far south as Durham, winds reached 104 mph.
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https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_91ed7d2e-fb65-45d8-8a83-0cdc1dcd4f14/
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Whilst the storm was not quite as severe in England and Wales, most of the country was hit by winds of 50 mph and more, even in the far south. Manchester had winds of 91 mph.
Nobody under 20 has ever experienced a storm like this one, or the many similar ones which hit Britain in the 1980s and 90s.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I was 12 years old at the time and I lived in the east end of Glasgow. I remember the streets were covered by the remains of chimney pots. I woke up in the night because the windows were vibrating and were making so much noise. There was remarkably little coverage of the storm and the aftermath in the national news.
Wreaked, not reeked (unless it was a particularly smelly storm).
No-one to blame, therefore not news. Makes one think that what has changed in the intervening years is the growth of a blame culture. In those olden times, things happened; sad but that was the way of the world. Nowadays, society’s instant reaction is to look round for someone who can take the rap.
Maybe this is an angle we should push more by making use of events like this (with of course a multitude similar). It’s not just more things get in the way so the same event costs more (Pielke thesis), but a marked and demonstrable cultural change. That coupled with the data not revealing changes in the frequency or severity of meteorologically driven events (IPCC).
You mean she actually wrote ‘reeked’ in that report? New depths of illiteracy in Scottish journalism!
If I recall the date correctly it would have been the tailend of this storm (we lived in Falkirk at the time) that demolished our, admitedly ramshackle, porch!
Remember that night , very scary, in a bungalow with trees to one side. Next morning so many trees were down at the hotel next door that they lost a wood and gained a lawn once everything was cleared ( though a dog was lost when it ran into the roots as the trunk was cut and the tree righted itself, a big lesson to all us kids who were making hides in the destroyed landscape)
” as the trunk was cut and the tree righted itself”
I have helped build and maintain trails in the mountains of Washington State.
Cleaning trails of down trees (a log-out) requires several warnings regarding safety. Your comment is one of them.
People reading on this blog are of advanced age, sort of. A person would have to be born by 1953-55 to remember this storm well.
Hail to the old folks.
O/T GBnews headlines “The Met Office say it’s the second warmest year since records began, the previous years was the hottest”
To me this concept is a PR thing , not a truth thing .. and the UK climate is cold and wet like it usually is.. The crops still grow etc.
When you hear of some of the reports one wonders if the letter ‘I’ is missing before the Q.
I remember this one. Worst of my life. I made my way home to the sound of the massive tenement chimney breasts crashing to the ground. The wind was ferocious.
And what about the January storm of 2005? 2006?. No way of getting anywhere from Leeds by train. ECML and WCML power lines down. Tree trunks were snapped like matchsticks. Stationary lorries blown over in Tebay services. Had to take a taxi home, 200 miles, luckily I did not have to pay.
If this is the storm I remember then it removed a load of slates from our roof along with zinc from the ridge and gutters. But what I remember waking after a disturbed night, and the carpet/large rug on the bedroom floor undulating in the wind. There were no trees down to block our 4 mile trip to the main road but once there 20 metres in either direction was all you could manage.
I was 12 years old, living in Cumbernauld just east of Glasgow.
I slept all through it. I wish I could do that now!
We walked to school through the debris to find it closed. Many of the windows were shattered. We were told to come back the next day, which we did, to find all repaired and the school open. Can you imagine that happening now?
When I went to university in Glasgow in 1974 there were still buildings with tarpaulins on the roof.
Funny, isn’t it? I lived in Edinburgh at the time and have no memory of the storm.
Today, however, coming home in the afternoon our car received two separate bangs on the roof from – I assume – falling branches.
I was aged 7 at the time and living 3 miles northwest of Glasgow. I remember the noise and highwinds and a seeing a number of mature trees blown over the following day. We were in a house just a few years old and in an area sheltered to some extent by surrouning hills. So no doubt lucky compared to many.