BleakMidwinter

I've seen that happen in the Balkans in 1996 - blazing hot 40Ccentral-south European summer, two days of grey rain, bang into freezing winter... in September!

I get a kind of "reverse SAD" so for me, summer is a terrible time, and I struggle horribly as everyone around me celebrates the blue skies and hot temps and dry weather... Now I can see the autumnal weather on the horizon, I already feel better. I wake up more alertly in the mornings, I sleep more soundly, I feel taller and lighter, I am *interested* in the world around me more, I care about stuff more, I laugh and smile more... I no longer wake up feeling grimly determined to drag myself through yet another day with "no air in the air" as it feels to me. It isn't only "ooh, I love winter!" - it is also that hot dry weather is as difficult for me as the dark cold weather is for the SAD-sufferers...

Did someone call?

As the temps here hit 30 yet again, forecast to do it every day til next week and it's only Tuesday now, if ONE MORE PERSON says to me that "with this much hot weather, it's bound to mean a really cold winter..." I am going to get *very* sarcastic at them...

Nah, you're alright - we'd never have got the matches to light in this wind

Startling footage of it going too - sheet metal behaving like a sheet on the clothesline! Landed on live wires in the street too... lucky nobody hurt...

My parents flew into Heathrow on the very last flight allowed to land as the 1§987 hurricane hit... and that was only because it was Cathay Pacific whose crews were used to flying and landing in typhoon conditions!

Strewth!!!!!!!

Ah right! Thanks, I was confused there! Yes, that makes sense... I think one factor might be that the start of the Red was pushed back a little to start at 7am - last night it was a 5am expected start and iirc originally 3am, so presumably the whole thing has approached slightly later than originally expected? I know a lot of coastal places are hugely relieved that their high tide has now been and gone and is starting to recede, prior to the storm surge arriving, where originally it looked as if the surge and high water would coincide disastrously...

Wow, that's abrupt! Hope you get your electric back on soon - many thanks for your updates, they've helped me explain to friends that it isn't *only* Britain being affected by this...!

Riight. So what you're saying is that, during a period several hours before the peak, your peak was below the peak, yes? okay.

Peaked? It's still building for an hour or so yet!

My old home in Edinburgh sat 30m below, with nothing at all in between, the Blackford Observatory station which recorded the 102mph gust in Storm Ulli - at exactly that time, a huge heavy Victorian cast-iron skylight was wrenched out of our roof (on the leeward side of the roof, at that), and landed three storeys down in the back garden as a startling piece of twisted metal. Neighbours two gardens away found broken window-glass shards across their gardens... We were lucky the damage wasn't worse, and that it landed harmlessly in gardens, but a gust can do serious damage...

Grey and drizzly here in Telford, but looking forward to some colder weather soon, preferably of the white and blizzardy variety! I shall never forget early December 2017 when we had a foot of snow on the Friday (7th?) from the NW and then another foot on the Sunday from the SW, two totally unrelated weather systems giving me more snow than I'd ever had in my life to play with! I keep hoping...