Storm Hits The UK

Sunday night (27th October 2013) saw the beginning of an almighty storm sweep across most parts of the UK. By Monday, fences were down, trees uprooted and trains cancelled due to the effects of the extreme 100mph wind speeds.

Named St Jude, the storm has left thousands of homes powerless, many places under threat of flooding and flights and trains being cancelled. Tragically two people have died and a 14-year old boy has gone missing after being swept away by the sea in Sussex.

The victims were a 17-year old girl from Kent who died when a tree fell onto where she was sleeping and a 50-year old man from Hertfordshire, who was pronounced dead at the scene after his car was crushed by a falling tree. 

The hurricane-force winds hit the UK from the Atlantic Ocean, where usually storms of their kind tend to have calmed by the time they reach the UK, however it believed that when the storm hit the UK on Monday morning it was in its most powerful phase, assisted by a strong jet stream and warm air close to the UK. Great!

We’re not sure why the storm was named St Jude, as usually storms don’t get ‘proper’ names, and even the Met office are a bit stumped. A spokesperson for the Met Office stated, “We don’t actually know where it has come from. We don’t name storms in the UK. The Americans name hurricanes, and the Europeans sometimes name storms, but we don’t. It could have been Americans who named it and it was reported in their media. Or it could be someone in the media here saw that it was St Jude’s day and decided to name it that”.

St Jude is said to be the worst storm to hit Britain since the so-called great storm of 1987 where winds reached heights of 115mph.

See some of the storm’s destruction below:

And then there’s this: