Weather

 

To discover the relative humidity forecast in your area please click the link below:         

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather

 

Ebac Weekly article

16th October 2006

by John Kettley

 

What came to be known as the Great Storm swept Southern Britain in the early hours of Friday 16th October 1987 and for millions of people there was a story to be told. For television and radio presenters working at the time it was a period when we were front-page news and everyone wanted interviews, not least at the BBC where we were shared no mercy. It was disappointing from a personal point of view as I had presented the television forecast the previous Sunday, highlighting the possibility of very windy weather at the end of the week. Of course that clip has never been shown since – understandably overshadowed by the Michael Fish denial of a hurricane on its way. What happened between the Sunday and the Thursday evening was an adjustment in the forecast taking the stormiest weather into the near continent. In truth it was just a small change for the computer models but in practice meant hurricane force gusts did hit a large swathe of the country from Dorset to Norfolk, including London.

 

However the irony of the whole event was that I appeared about twenty times on BBC Breakfast TV on the morning of the storm and for the people worst affected there was no power, no television - more than half of the UK being immune to the events further south as they woke to relatively benign conditions!

 

After a few quiet days the weather this week is much more volatile with some heavy rain returning to many areas. Another period of southerly winds means we continue to think that global warming is firmly entrenched and records will continue to be broken!

 

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