Storm Darragh

Given the Bideford bay waverider is moored in 11m deep water, my money is on a buoy flip.

Fairy ’nuff

Still massive though. Just not Perfect Storm massive.

To be fair the buoy reading is leaping all over the place so you are probably right that it’s not a true reading and is probably getting tossed around by the wind

That said surf lines model is saying the swell was 18 @ 12 seconds  and the beaches have white water as far as the eye can see so it’s definitely chunky.

Bodhi would probably go……. ?

couple my mate took from a safe distance in Ilfracombe earlier ( which faces north so not facing directly into the storm)

Bideford bay buoy recorded 79 feet of swell at 3 am this morning.

Plausible, considering the Bristol Channel has the second highest tidal range in the world at 50ft, so given a brisk wind behind an incoming tide, it could add another 20-30 ft, I’d guess.

It’s still pretty windy here in Chippenham, 24-32mph NW, gusting to 56mph, apparently. This was at the start of Avenue La Flèche, the bypass around Chippenham town centre at around 3.30 this afternoon. The tree surgeons came up from Dorset…

The tree is actually rotten at the base, considering how busy that road is, it’s a miracle it didn’t come down on a car or motorcycle.

I’d guess.

incorrectly. Tides and surges act over periods in the order of hours, wind waves over periods in the order of seconds. tidal waves have nothing to do with tides and act over periods in the order of minutes.

Meteotsumanis are my favourite but super obscure..

My neighbour’s ridge tiles blew off too and landed on his SUV… still no electricity in the village (and won’t be for a while) so my aged mum sat all night with my Exposure Torro upright in a cup aimed into a lampshade, on its lowest setting it’s good for hours… worked really well.

Some of next doors ridge tiles have gone today, luckily I’d had mine re-done two weeks ago, so fingers crossed. Lots of trees down, lanes and even major roads flooded in places, low lying parts of area will be crapping it for the next couple of high tide surges with the stupid amounts of rainfall draining away and the wind.

Charged my Bluetti battery and got my gas stove ready for power cuts, few areas around here are already without.

Had a power cut in Hampshire yesterday (lots of places nearby still out) but electricity only back at weak strength. So half of lighting not working and appliances at half-power. Had no idea that was possible. Have reset the fuse box but that’s not improved things.

@corroded – That’s definitely a thing.

After Arwen our village lost power for about 36 hours. When it came back on, friends of ours couldn’t run their electric heating but there was enough power for lights etc.

Took another 24hrs for heating.

@corroded – ring that in. It might just be that you’re resupplied by a long heavily loaded feeder, but there’s also a number of fault types that might cause that – you need to get yourself back on the fault list either way.

what a difference a day makes, sunshine now and just a bit breezy here, the bloke next door is mowing his lawn!

well done Met Office for what was in the end pretty accurate forecasting, Darragh was only a named storm by was it Wednesday or Thursday, and then through Friday heightened warnings until the full force hit early hours Saturday (for us anyway).

shame I have a stack of marking to be done otherwise I’d be out on the bike! 🙂

Will report it, thank you.

Blew a hooley all last night here in the Shire of Ilkeston, but nothing like the west coast had.

A few trees down blocking the lanes that always get blocked by falling trees in high winds, and it looks like the isolated buildings around the old Shipley Hall site have lost power – sadly two of them are cafes!

Still breezy here on the edge of the Peak District, I did a ride this morning around some of the tiny back lanes many of which have gravel and various bits of tree debris all over them now.

Had to pedal down one descent straight into the headwind which I felt was rather unfair.

Ah should have posted here rather than on a new thread. I was just very excited having jury-rigged us some internet so I can work from home tomorrow as planned. Certainly won’t be using our not quite as new as it was fibre link!

Electricity back on here after 18 hours off, my daughter took my sister to the village church carol service last night , vicar said if power went they should all stay inside. Meanwhile outside a mahoosive beech tree in the graveyard crashed down inches from daughters car. Any other time the westerlies would have put it through the church roof or onto the very busy main road, lucky escape for every one.  Went to check on an elderly relative, electricity on but boiler had tripped out so a quick reset and good to go but the house was bloody freezing , it is very cold out there in this north wind.

Apparently a local village in Welshland has had no power for 24hrs +

About an 1hr ago the water has gone off in our local area . Apparently our water is pumped to us, and as their is no electricity where the pumps are in Welshland over and down the hill, the pumps have stopped working (assume they had back up generators that have now run out of fuel)

Apparently electricity cannot be restored until the wind drops and it’s certainly a bit breezy here still. You would have thought they would have some Jerry cans though ?

A very lovely roofer visited today and put the missing tiles back, and also gave me a quote for some work that’s needed doing for a while so that’ll keep him busy and me poor!

I’ve got friends in Brecon and Carmarthen who’ve been without power for over 24 hours and have been told it’s unlikely to be restored until the end of next week. Unfortunately both removed their log burners a few years ago (trying to be more “green”) so they have no heating, no way of cooking as they’re on oil and have electric ovens/hobs, no internet or phone signal, and friend near Carmarthen also has no water as they’re on borehole and the pump won’t run! We’ve dropped our spare diesel genny and gas camping hob over to him as he’s got young kids so at least they can run an oil rad, boil a kettle, and cook them a bit of food.

It definitely makes you think about being a bit more self-sufficient and to have alternatives if infrastructure fails.

Apparently a local village in Welshland has had no power for 24hrs +

Still no power here in SW Wales.  They are suggesting it will be back by 6.00.  Still I guess that if you live in a daft place you have to put up with this kinda thing.

Still I guess that if you live in a daft place you have to put up with this kinda thing.

I don’t live in a daft place, I live in England 😉

I don’t live in a daft place, I live in England

Well I won’t comment on the England bit…

I definitely live in a daft place!

Well we went to a place near Lampeter today, which is only accessible by B roads or A roads that should be B roads.  Even on the motorway you could see freshly snapped tree limbs everywhere there were trees. Once into the countryside there were sticks all over the roads basically everywhere, loads of downed branches and bits of tree hanging in the roads but you could drive around. However one road was completely blocked and someone (not the council) was chopping up a proper big tree. They turned us away saying there were another 12 on that section.  Lots of stuff had already been cleared or trimmed back apparently by locals. Lots of tractors and quads out and about. We saw one farm with a huge tree completely blocking their access track.

The power was on in Lampeter though and we were able to find somewhere for lunch, although they were short staffed as people couldn’t get in. The people we were supposed to meet had been stuck in St David’s.

We lost power overnight here but it was back by 8.30. It came and went intermittently for a couple of hours but is stable now. Western edge of Bannau Brycheiniog NP.

Rather conveniently for me all the leaves I never got around to collecting were blown into a nice neat drift by the back door.  Bagged up into town bags now, sorted.

Collected the Christmas tree from a local farm who were still waiting for power to return. The irony is that they farm up on the edge of one of the local wind farms.

Rather conveniently for me all the leaves I never got around to collecting were blown into a nice neat drift by the back door.

Same here, there’s a slight dip by our fence and they’ve all deposited in it, I’m leaving them now for the winter for any needy local wildlife, or at least that’s my excuse!

24hrs isn’t exactly shocking given the scale of the damage. It was ..  7 -10 days stretching to 3 weeks for some of the guys here during Arwen .

Only just back online and on power here, just outside Aberystwyth. Drove back from Manchester on Friday somewhat unaware of the issues until the red warning alert fired up as i crossed into north Wales. Battened everything down against wind and settled in without giving the rain second through as the forecast wasn’t bad and the alerts for our area were for wind. Surprised to wake up Saturday to the river in the garden the highest we have seen in in 10 years and the ground water overtopping the tanking of the basement. So we have some slightly stinky septic tank overflow water to remove but other than that have escaped.

And given the number of tress down and general flooding the fact that the council have most stuff clear and the schools mostly open should be applauded given there were still trees coming down early Sunday morning. Power firms as well.

Exposure lights have been posting ads on FB of people using their lights in the house while they have no electricity. Might be cheaper to get a generator but not such good aftersales service.

Just got back from Gwydir forest and the trail has been absolutely hammered, don’t even know where you would start!

Found a route to the car park eventually (several roads closed due to fallen trees) but I passed several telegraph poles that look like they’ve been snapped like matchsticks.

From the main car park there is a tree over the track just after the first lot of roots/rocks, its fallen and taken all the roots/trail with it.

Managed to get past that and it’s seems okay until I turned right and did the first climb up the fire road, some huge trees have fallen over the road which were just about passable and I carried on up the hill to the first left hand bend and that’s where I stopped!

I honestly can’t describe how bad it is, the road simply disappears there are that many (big and chunky) trees that have fallen. I tried scrambling and taking shortcuts but it didn’t get any better and I simply hit a dead end in the end.

I took a short cut back to the car park which took me down the final quick jumps and again there are fallen trees everywhere.

I wouldn’t waste a journey travelling there and I can’t see it being open fully for a long long time 🙁

Why did you go? Surely you could have guessed it was like that?

Obviously I expected trees to be down, just didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was.

What did you expect?  Fresh piles of kindling from the forest creatures and manicured singletrack?

There was a red alert for coastal communities, amber further inland.

Found a route to the car park eventually (several roads closed due to fallen trees)

A normal person would have took that as a sign to turn back. The mind boggles…..

NRW have closed all car parks and trails around Brechfa, the forest has taken an absolute hammering so it could be months before it’s safe to reopen :(.

Bloody hell, time of the month Elshalimo?

I live in the area and I’m fully aware of the weather conditions and damage as a result, just thought I would visit to see the extent of the damage and mention the state of the trail to save anyone travelling to the area or considering travelling in the near future.

No idea why you have a chip on your shoulder, “the mind boggles……..”

Well the power is still off here (went of at 4am on Saturday!). They did manage to remove the big oak across the road yesterday afternoon so at least we can get out and get supplies. Far better off than the poor sods in the next valley over which has been declared a state of emergency. Several hundred very big trees have come down across the only road in and out like some sort of giant game of kerplunk. Will tak eweeks to cut them all out. Unfortunatey the power line also ran alongside the road so they are without power too. Authorities have offered to helicopter people out if they absolutely have to get from there. I did hear a chopper earlier so hopefully nothing serious.

This is part of the road up next valley

This is the monster that was blocking our access

@niel11

Maybe if you clearly communicated that you just popped in to check it out to prevent others travelling you wouldn’t be demonstrating your angry self?

If you live nearby you’ll no doubt know how dangerous forests are after a storm, how trees can move in lethal ways whilst settling, given a slight bang or another strong breeze, the poor provision of healthcare on a relatively normal day and that mountain rescue would just love getting out of bed to rescue a misadventurer.

It’s only natural to want to go and have a look at how much damage has occurred or if it’s not too bad, what a nanny state we live in if we worry what if a rogue gust appears from nowhere

Flying through woods on a bike you might come off and hit a tree exactly where there’s a broken branch and it goes right through the jugular. We used to fly on the trails in the dark with crappy lights and other than a few cuts and bruises survived to live another day

@elshalimo

Okay you go wrap yourself in cotton wool poppet, meanwhile the rest of us adults will use our judgement and take an educated risk every time we go out. Do you stand at the bottom of every trail in the country sprouting this nonsense?

I had suitable equipment and dressed accordingly, admittedly I didn’t have an SAS rescue squad on standby but luckily I survived this time.

Anyway that’s the end of it, you’re the definition of a keyboard warrior and you’ve had you’re feed for today.

Thanks for those local to events sharing their experience – missed it completely in Manchester. At lease we know most trails will be out of use for a while.