IT was one of the worst storms to hit these islands in history. On October 15, 1987, a hurricane swept across the South of England leaving devastation in its wake. The storm killed 18 people, felled an estimated 15 million trees and caused the National Grid to shut down power to the South-East for a time.
It also cost the insurance industry £2bn in claims from those affected.
Famously, BBC weather forecaster Michael Fish said during a broadcast a few hours before the storm broke: “Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way... well, if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t!”
He later claimed he was fact referring to a hurricane in Florida, although his comments were widely interpreted as referring to the UK.
Fish has since said he would be a millionaire if given a penny for every mention of his forecast.
Meanwhile, the forecast has passed into folklore and even featured in the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.
Twenty-five years on, computer systems that help us to predict forthcoming weather have improved massively Tom Tobler, a forecaster with Meteo Group, says there was much more scope in 1987 for predictions to go wrong because of the limited technology being used, but admits that even now the very nature of our climate means an element of unpredictability will always remain.
“The main difference is in the computer modelling we have now, the resolution is now much finer,” he says.
“We also have much better observation these days about the current state of the weather being fed into those models – due to a lot more information from satellites.
“Computers are so much faster as well, so we can run the models a lot more often, running them many times from different starting points. It would be very difficult for something to go as drastically wrong as that [the Fish forecast] because we get better quality models and get them several times a day.
“However, we don’t have weather observing sites every square mile across the Earth’s surfaces, so there is always an estimate to start with and the further into the future you go those uncertainties can multiply due to the chaotic nature of the atmosphere.
“It is more about getting the fine detail right these days because in some cases the areas affected by severe weather can be fairly localised.”
It is perhaps a good thing that we can better predict severe storms since a growing amount of research suggests we can expect more of them in the UK.
In 2009, a study by Dr Hayley Fowler, of Newcastle University, predicted that – consistent with global warming – as the air becomes warmer and is able to hold more moisture, the UK will get wetter.
The study said severe storms would become more common and even more severe “in a matter of decades”.
It looked at extreme rainfall events – where rain falls steadily and heavily for between one and five days. Across the UK, the amount of rain falling during one of these events was likely to increase by up to 30 per cent by 2080.
The increase was most likely to occur in autumn, winter and spring when the ground is already saturated, posing the biggest threat of flooding. Northern and western regions of the UK are predicted to be worst hit.
Dr Geoff O’Brien, a senior lecturer in environmental management at Northumbria University, says there is no doubt our weather is becoming more unpredictable and severe.
“We have all seen with our own eyes recently that when the rain does come down it comes down in buckets. It is very intense,” he says.
DR O’Brien says a major factor is what he describes as “Arctic amplification” – where the traditionally cold and icy Arctic is heating up faster than other parts of the planet.
The associated change in temperature gradient affects the track of the jet stream which regulates the British weather.
“Over the summer, it was sitting much further south than usual which meant it was drawing in storm events and wet weather,” he says. The other thing affecting the position of the jet stream is the warming of the Atlantic Ocean, which is creating a huge amount of energy.
“Ultimately, there remains huge uncertainties with climate projections.
“We always knew that with climate change, things might get a bit warmer, but other things could change things quite radically.
“We might get more mild winters, but we get very wet summers to go with it.”
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