page_title: Great Storm of 1987
section_title: Winds
hierarchical_section_title: Great Storm of 1987 / Development / Winds
caption_attribution_description: English: A storm-damaged building on the sea-front at Barton on Sea in Hampshire, England. The damage occurred on the night of 15/16 October 1987, during the Great Storm of 1987 when southern England was hit by a severe storm. The damage to this building was one of the more newsworthy acts of destruction that night. This picture was taken a few days later, probably Sunday 18 October. The picture was taken with a pocket camera on 110 cartridge film.
context_page_description: The Great Storm of 1987 was a violent extratropical cyclone that occurred on the night of 15–16 October, with hurricane-force winds causing casualties in the United Kingdom, France and the Channel Islands as a severe depression in the Bay of Biscay moved northeast. Among the most damaged areas were Greater London, the East Anglian coast, the Home Counties, the west of Brittany and the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy, all of which weathered gusts typically with a return period of 1 in 200 years.
  Forests, parks, roads and railways were strewn with fallen trees as well as schools being closed. The British National Grid suffered heavy damage, leaving thousands without power. At least 22 people were killed in England and France. The highest measured gust of 117 kn was recorded at Pointe Du Roc, Granville, France and the highest gust in the UK of 106 kn was recorded at Gorleston-on-Sea. The storm has been termed a weather bomb due to its rapid development.
  That day's weather reports had failed to indicate a storm of such severity, an earlier, correct forecast having been negated by later projections.
context_section_description: A highest gust of 119 kn (220 km/h; 137 mph) is estimated from satellite data at Quimper, Brittany, with the highest measured gust at 117 kn (217 km/h; 135 mph) at Pointe du Roc, Granville, Normandy.
  In south-east England, where the greatest damage occurred, gusts of 70 knots (130 km/h; 81 mph) or more were recorded continually for three or four consecutive hours.
  During this time, the wind veered from southerly to south-westerly. To the north-west of this region, there were two maxima in gust speeds, separated by a period of lower wind speeds. During the first period, the wind direction was southerly. During the latter, it was south-westerly. Damage patterns in south-east England suggested that tornadoes accompanied the storm.
  In the UK, winds at Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex reached 100 kn (190 km/h; 120 mph) before the anemometer failed. Many anemometers were reliant on mains power, and ceased recording as the south east of the United Kingdom was blacked-out by power cuts, thus losing much valuable data.
  Winds with an estimated 200-year return period hit the counties of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and along the coastal strip of Essex, Suffolk and South Eastern Norfolk. North of a line from Portland Bill, Dorset to Cromer, Norfolk the return period of the respective gusts were under 10 years.
  Sustained winds speeds greater than 75 mph were recorded for over an hour in southern Britain. According to the Beaufort scale of wind intensities, this storm had winds of hurricane force 12 (73 mph or greater); as the term hurricane refers to tropical cyclones originating in the North Atlantic or North Pacific, the descriptor "great storm" has tended to be reserved for those storms in recent years reaching this velocity. Hurricanes have a very different wind profile and distribution from storms, and significantly higher precipitation levels.
caption: Storm damaged building, Barton on Sea in Hampshire
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