'87 Storm

squonk · 12-09-2011 4:30pm #1

Hi,

I was thinking back to '87 as I lay in bed listening to the storm last night. Was the storm quite a large, wide LP? I'm wondering because I got the day off school because the winds were forecast to be quite strong. I don't particularly remember the storm being particularly bad but what came later was better.

If I'm not mistaken, the following day, or perhaps the day after, we had showery weather with quite heavy hail showers and thunderstorms. I remember going up to visit one of my neighbours. Their house was on top of a hill. While I was there a ferocious thunder shower started but it was hail instead of rain we got. The thunder was quite active too and I remember a flash fairly close by. On the way home I could see the whole area was still white in spots as I cam back down the hill. It was one of the few times when I can remember the weather being particularly unstable.

What I'm wondering is whether I'm actually describing the same event (I think I am) and if so, did the storm pull a large amount of arctic air down to mix with warmer air in our neck of the woods? I remember it being fairly cold and wintry that day.

Gonzo · 12-09-2011 8:12pm

was this in January or February 87? all i remember from that year was loads of snow with drifts of 2 to 3 feet in places around Meath.

squonk · 12-09-2011 10:26pm

No, October. I don't remember Jan 87 being snowy. 86, yes.

opinion guy · 12-09-2011 10:30pm

Alls I remember is everyone at school talking about the mad thunder and lightning and I had noooooo idea what they were all talking about since I slept through the whole thing.

12-09-2011 11:11pm

I remember the 87 storm quite well, Living in Wales at the time (watching the sheep glow in the dark!

), drove home to my parants the same day.
They lived near Ipswich, one of the areas badly affected.

The last few miles was like driving through a timber yard, trees down everywhere and loads of cut up ones along the side of the road.

Reached their house and no electric for the week.

Lots of houses with a few roof tiles gone a few garages missing their roofs, many fences gone in the area but fortunately no deaths.

up for anything · 14-09-2011 12:19am

I was staying at at the Selsdon Park Hotel in Croydon in the UK that night. When I was shown to my room, the bell boy chappie gleefully told me it was in the older part of the hotel and haunted. I went to sleep with the tv and all the lights on. I woke up with a jump and it was pitch black and the bed was shaking. I seriously thought I was in my very own exorcist film. I terrified that the bedclothes would be ripped from me by skeletal fingers. I managed to find the hotel book of matches and kept striking them trying to find my way to the phone. Couldn't get the reception on the phone but managed to call my house in London where my father was staying to ask him to phone the hotel and ask them to bring me up a light. (I'm a big scaredy cat about the dark). I couldn't understand why he was muttering curses and moaning about having banged his shin on the way to the phone.

I was delivered my light, a hurricane lamp, by two of the staff who were sniggering at me and went back to sleep. Went down to breakfast in the morning along with all the other hangovers and it took a while focus the eyes on the great outdoors through the picture windows and then wondered why there was a huge tree lying across the lawn (a beautiful 600 year old Oak tree).

It took about 7 hours to get from South London to West London by car that day.

I have to say though that the storm on 2nd January, '76 seemed worse to me though. My mother and I were driving from Cork back to Kilkenny. It took hours and as we drove as well as trees falling, the telephone poles were falling across the roads and the ESB cables were spitting and sparking. That was terrifying.

'87 Storm

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