So, why all the fuss about the weather? The media were aghast that a tornado could rip through quiet residential streets of London last week, leaving 100 houses damaged and several people injured. “Freak” was the favourite description — after all, this is the sort of thing that happens in Oklahoma City, not London NW10.
But tornados have been ripping through Britain for centuries. London was hit by an even worse one almost exactly to the day 52 years ago, which left a scene of devastation reminiscent of the Blitz and ended up in Willesden, next door to Kensal Rise. And the deadliest tornado in British history struck in October 1913, when six people were killed at Edwardsville, Glamorgan.
There is nothing freakish about tornados in this country, though they usually get the headlines only when big urban areas are hit. Only two weeks ago a village near Aberystwyth was badly hit when a tornado turned over caravans, sent chimneys crashing and left debris scattered up to 20 miles away. It was barely mentioned in the national media.
The trouble is that we seem to think British weather is a bit of a pussycat — soft and mild most of the time, with the occasional outburst when it gets temperamental. But in reality our “freak” weather is not so freakish after all.
In some cases it can be truly monstrous. The floods of 1953 along the East Coast and Thames estuary killed more than 300 people, and came close to inundating London; it led to the Thames Barrier being built. The London smog of December 1952 killed an estimated 12,000 people, the worst air pollution episode in the world; the ensuing public outcry led a reluctant government to pass the Clean Air Act to rid urban areas of coal smoke.
The storm in October 1987 killed 19 people, felled 15 million trees and cost around £1.5 billion. Even more insidious were more than 2,000 deaths attributed to the effects of the blistering hot summer of August 2003. The Boscastle flash flood two years ago showed the horror of a sudden torrential downpour funnelled down narrow valleys.
Lightning strikes in some quite horrifying ways. This summer, in Kidderminster, a mother and her baby were hurled across a bedroom when their house was hit. A woman in Liverpool was electrocuted talking on a phone when lightning ripped down the cable. Lightning bolts have blown up some 20 or so houses, their electrics blasted apart and the buildings set ablaze. Lightning is reckoned to cause £24 million damage each year in the UK to electronic equipment, computers, fax machines, scanners, printers and telephones — even when the equipment is switched off but still plugged into wall sockets.
No, the British weather is a beast, not a pussycat, and demands respect. We live on the battlefront between warring air masses: bitterly cold Arctic air to the north, balmy, sub-tropical air to the south. It is the source of our current storms, downpours, winds and, of course, tornados.
Britain has always been a dangerous place. It was no accident that the first Roman invasion 2,000 years ago got blown out by a storm in the Channel, as did the Spanish Armada and many other unwelcome visitors. The old town of Winchelsea on the South Coast was obliterated by a storm in 1287 — its remains lie buried under Pontins on Camber Sands. The greatest recorded natural disaster in British history was the storm of December 1703, which left a scene of apocalyptic proportions: 400 windmills burnt down when the sails spun round too fast, the lead rolled off church roofs, coastlines and rivers were strewn with the wreckage of ships, some 8,000 sailors were killed. A similar storm today is reckoned capable of causing damage reaching £15 billion and a death toll of perhaps thousands.
There was a great deal more respect for the weather when ships were driven by the winds and much of the population worked the land. Modern life is largely cossetted from the elements, but the violence of the weather is finally becoming clearer — in home buildings insurance. The insurance industry knows well that natural disasters are growing worse and more expensive as sea levels rise, storms turn more violent, torrential rains set off floods and heatwaves reach sub-tropical proportions.
Global warming is beginning to hurt in the pocket and could very soon cost some hair-raising amounts. It will not be cheap keeping the North Sea storm surges out of London and the Thames estuary. Plans for a multibillion-pound replacement to the barrier are going to be needed soon. And before then some £4 billion will be required shoring up floodwalls. The alternative could be a disaster of New Orleans proportions.
Other parts of Britain need flood protection. Failure to invest in flood defences on the East Coast could result in £16 billion of damage, according to the Association of British Insurers. Over England and Wales, more than a million properties with a value of £130 billion will be at risk of coastal and tidal flooding in 50 years’ time and another 100,000, valued at £8 billion, threatened by coastal erosion.
At the same time there are the extraordinary costs of keeping southern and eastern England supplied with water during long droughts, and huge power demands for keeping air conditioning going during intense heatwaves.
This week, the rains may be crashing down, storm-force winds howling and tornados raging, but they are all a timely reminder that Britain’s weather can be wild and furious and it is growing steadily worse. The “freak” incidents are going to become horribly familiar in the future.
Paul Simons writes the Weather Eye column in The Times
