Storm Eowyn

simmo

simmo

Senior Jockey
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South Lanarkshire
Had to argue quite vigorously with management that I was not going to be doing any driving today - thankfully got my way - trees down all over the shop, including on the M74.

It's certainly the worst one I've seen for a while, my shed is in pieces, got a fence down but thankfully nothing more serious as yet.

God knows how the electricity has stayed on, it's gone off for a few seconds at a time on a number of occasions but is holding up just now.

Hopefully I haven't spoken to soon on the damage or electric front and hope others are all ok too.
 
I'm not far from you, simmo, but it's been okay with no discernible damage anywhere around. Even the neighbour's trampoline is still there!

In my last house you only needed to sneeze and the fence would collapse and tiles often displaced on a gusty day. I'm not convinced today's winds are any stronger than Hurricane Bawbag from a few years ago and it's just a mild breeze compared to January 1968.

The family were just saying on WhatsApp that we walked to primary school in stronger winds. One of the brothers recalls hanging on to a tree trunk with his body horizontal in the wind, scared to death about being blown away. I suspect the horizontal bit was a slight exaggeration (I've told him a million times not to do that) but we're all agreed we've had worse storms.
 
We have barely had much of a breeze in West Somerset. Currently sunny here. I was a little worried as a guy is coming round to look at a leak in the roof this afternoon.
Storm Daragh was way worse. I have never ever heard wind that strong in my life and a lot of big trees came down locally.
 
simmo said:
The main road near you was shut earlier, tree down.

The brothers greenhouse has gone.
Click to expand...

There's been several trees down on the A71 over the 29 years I've been living here when it hasn't been as windy as today and one of my fellow Shedders lost his greenhouse last year when a gale blew.

At the risk of sounding like Old Jim from The Vicar of Dibley, when the great storm of January '68 hit, we counted over 100 trees down in a nearby wood, swathes of woodland on the hills were rased to the ground, numerous chimney stacks collapsed on Glasgow tenements (people were killed), and my parents got no sleep that night. We had eleven windows blown in and my parents spent the night holding things like my wee sister's blackboard and our shove-ha'penny board against the biggest windows to keep the wind and rain out of the house. That was genuinely scary.

From memory, the winds peaked at 132mph that night.

This is the Wiki entry although I don't know how accurate it is:

en.wikipedia.org

1968 Scotland storm - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
We had no power for @12 hours and no internet till this afternoon. I was quite proud of myself for heating up a carbonara that needed using up yesterday by putting tea lights in a loaf tin, placing another loaf tin on top of it with the carbonara in and wrapping it all in tin foil. We lost lots of roof tiles and guttering during Storm Arwen so thankfully it was pretty solid for this one. I did feel the whole house shake just before the power went off, though. At least, with my new beenie hat with a led light I was able to do a lot of reading; coincidentally the book I’m reading is The Dark is Rising.
 
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