Fallen trees & electric cables have blocked many roads. Causing major & minor traffic congestion.
All main airports have been closed until this evening due to the storm.
Anglian railway has been closed until further notice due to blocked tracks, which at this moment are being cleared by fire fighters & volunteers.
Meanwhile, in Dover, a ferry has been brought ashore by last night’s weather, thousands of pounds are due to be spent moving it.
And in the Isle of white a major tourist pier was flattened, constructors say that the damage is too major to be fixed, instead a new one will have to be built to take its place.
A few Churches have been damaged, ones reported, in Kent, to have lost its steeple.
Office blocks & flats have been reported to of come down.
Many villages and towns were completely isolated by fallen trees
An estimated total of £1.5 Billion for insurance claims.
15 Million trees have been lost.
150,000 telephones were cut off.
Over 3 million households and businesses are still left without electricity.
Most of south east of England are without power, until further notice.
There has also been minor damage reported of chimney pots & stacks falling down, fences coming out of the ground, tiles coming off roofs of houses & many more electric cables have come down across roads & paths.
Little notice was given of the storm because only high winds and heavy rain was forecasted for the end of the week, a depression was noticed in the early hour of the 15th but was expected to track along the English Channel.
The depression suddenly deepened giving a central pressure reading of 958mb and with a very steep pressure gradient (slope), then the storm changed direction in its course & went north to track & became intense over the north west coast of Cornwall and Devon & across central southern midlands.
Warnings of strong winds gusting to 50Km per hour were given on TV weather forecasts, but the storm developed too rapidly that weather forecasters over England were unable to predict the track and intensity of the storm.
As soon as the weather conditions were recognised severe warnings were given to emergency services.
In the late hours of yesterday, weather forecast warnings of severe gale conditions were put across to radio shipping sea areas Thames, Dover, Wight & Portland.
Police and fire services alerted the issue that extreme wind conditions were expected.
Further into earlier this morning wind speeds of 94Km per hour were recorded at Heathrow airport, in excess of 100Km per hour on the south coast.
Centre of intense depression reached the North Sea; tracking across Buckinghamshire & Cambridgeshire to the Wash. Strongest winds in the south easterly area.
‘Hurricane Michael’ has been named after Michael Fish for his wrongly predicted weather forecast, but however correct in geographically correct terms of weather.
Hurricanes form over very warm tropical waters, close to the equator. The storm, which we have just experienced - or depression - formed off the eastern seaboard of North America & came across the English Channel and is totally different in character - no matter how windy it got. We don’t get hurricanes in this country - as Michael Fish pointed out yesterday. But we can get hurricane force winds.
Anglian Weather News
Sarah Gray.
