Morning after The Night Before

The Hurricane 25 years on.

On 15th October 1987 I called the local council to ask about the possibility of getting some trees planted in my street. The person I spoke to said he'd put us on the list.

In the evening weatherman Michael Fish said in his forecast that a woman had phoned to ask him if there was a hurricane on the way. In a reply that he was never to live down, Mr Fish told her not to worry, there was not.

That night the southern half of England was hit by hurricane-force winds that caused massive destruction, uprooting millions of trees, and killing 18 people.

From midnight to about 5 am on Friday October 16th I lay in bed listening to the winds howling outside my window, frequently jumpng up to look out at what damage might be being caused. Bizarrely I seem to have dropped off just as they storm reached its peak. When I awoke an hour later half my garden chairs had been lifted up and silently thrown over the table and remaining chairs half way up the garden. Part of the fence had been blown down. Then the power went off.

Having no idea how huge this event had been, I phoned school where I got the deputy head (how he got there I never knew) to tell him I would be late as I couldn't shower till the power came back on, and that was when I discovered that this thing was bigger than either of us. All schools across the south east would be closed. Trees were blocking all routes, including railway lines. Swathes of the countryside had been laid waste.

Later that morning I went to visit my parents, passing a nearby park where many trees had been lost. I parked in a nearby street, and went to visit her. Luckily they were not really affected. But when I returned to my car, there was a fire brigade turntable lorry sending a firefighter up to a high roof to peel the lead away from the skylight so that a resident could go out and check his roof.

I dashed home to get my camera, getting back just in time to see him being brought back down. Seeing my disappointment, the chief fireman sent the cradle back up so I could get my picture! There was such a feeling of community.

All through London trees were down, some across cars, some having crashed through roofs. Many major London streets are lined with huge plane trees, and large numbers of these had crashed across the thoroughfares.

Acres of woodland were lost, aerial views making the fallen trees look like matches.

Emmett's Garden, a place I have frequently posted pictures of in the past, is the highest garden in the county of Kent. The redwood you can see in this picture, which survived the storm, is the highest treetop in the county. Other trees were virtually lifted out of the ground by their roots.

Managers of many of these damaged woods cleared everything away to make it all look neat, and planted up with new saplings.

Wiser experts left the trees where they were. The roots sprouted new trees, and many species thrived in the lighter, more open spaces, which has led to a more considered management of woodland that benefits more species than the dark canopies that had developed since the days when woods were regularly coppiced for firewood.

Every available tree was put into service replanting the landscape, and my ill-timed request for trees was lost in the mists of time.

One of the causes of the damage was that a late autumn meant that most of the trees still had their leaves and therefore gave the winds lots of resistance. The ground was also very wet.

Given how late autumn has routinely become, and the amount of flooding the country now gets, I have a suspicion that events like this will no longer be happening every few hundred years like they used to.

Climate change? What climate change?