- Overnight October 15 and 16, 1987, parts of the UK were rocked by 50 m.p.h. mean speed winds, gusts between 90 m.p.h. and 115 m.p.h. (at Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex).
- Widespread devastation and 18 deaths.
- Royal Sovereign lightship on the south coast recorded a mean wind speed of 86 m.p.h.
- TV weather forecaster Michael Fish said on the October 15 lunchtime broadcast: "…earlier on today apparently a woman rang the BBC and said she'd heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well if you are watching don’t worry, there isn’t…"
The forecast timeline
- Five days before: Forecasters predict severe weather on the following Thursday or Friday.
- Three days before: Computer models suggest severe weather will only hit English Channel and coastal parts of southern England.
- Afternoon 15 Oct: Winds very light over most parts of the UK. Gale warning issued for the English Channel.
- Late evening 15 Oct: Gales in the channel forecast to be Force 10. Over land the emphasis of the last evening TV forecast is on very heavy rain.
- Early hours 16 Oct: Storm progresses, starts to turn more north-east towards south-east England. Warnings of severe weather issued to various agencies and emergency authorities, including the London Fire Brigade and Ministry of Defence (MoD). The MoD told there could be a civil emergency.
Wind charts from Shoreham-by-Sea on the night of the storm. Times in UTC
Infrared satellite image showing the storm at 0230 UTC 16 Oct 1987
The consequences
- Significant loss of life and devastation.
- Met Office's ability to forecast the weather brought into question and a public enquiry announced.
- Government and public realise just how much impact weather can have on the UK and the importance of timely warnings.
- Government funds the Met Office to increase computer power and to set up the National Severe Weather Warning Service.
The last 20 years
- Massive improvements in the capacity of supercomputers to analyse the increasing amount of available observations, from satellites etc. These advances are of similar proportion to those in home computing over the same period.
- The main forecasting models have improved to give a more realistic simulation (better physics) of how the atmosphere works.
- The Met Office produced a re-run of the storm, using current technology, which successfully forecast the event.
- Satellite information - data not pictures - and the way it is used in computer models provides vastly more data for the forecasting process than was available in 1987.
- With experience forecasters themselves have improved their understanding of what satellite pictures show in term of cloud heads and Sting Jets (hooked cloud heads associated with very strong winds), which help determine the characteristics of individual storms.
- As a result of the storm both the Met Office and our television presenters are better at telling the public about the risk posed by severe weather events.
Rainfall at Boscastle showing greater detail achieved from higher resolution models Forecasting in the future
In order to produce even better forecasts of weather now and climate in the future, the Met Office needs more powerful computers and more sophisticated rainfall radar systems, to provide initial data for our models.
By 2009, when our computer will be six times more powerful we will be able to:
- Operate a 1.5 km resolution model over the UK, which will improve our ability to forecast small scale severe weather events.
- Be clearer about the uncertainty within a forecast, and the likelihood of specific impacts from a severe weather event.
- Increase the detail in global weather forecasts to better predict the influence on UK weather from weather elsewhere.
If we had even more power and a more extensive and sophisticated radar network in the future we would be able to produce:
- More accurate forecasts of individual rain storms over a few hours.
- Reliable postcode district forecasts.
