Storm Debi is now due later on Monday 13 November and maybe into Tuesday 14 - initially for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, then West and North Wales, and North West England. Winds potentially up to 80mph (on current forecasts, as I write) and yet more substantial rain.
The projected track is still subject to change.
It is named after Debi Garft, who recently retired as senior policy officer in the Scottish Government Flooding Team
deep joy
Tangential rant...
Naming tropical storms and hurricanes in North America started in the mid-20th century to distinguish between concurrent systems in a relatively (formerly?) compact season. In the modern age of bombastic, sensational news, named storms proved a media hit.
Now anything more than a misty morning seems to be given a name, and there's really no reason for it other than creating drama to sell more ads.
Now anything more than a misty morning seems to be given a name, and
there's really no reason for it other than creating drama to sell more
ads.
Amen. Check a good weather source, and ignore the hype.
easy to say when you're not the one with rivers at or just below flood level already and saturated fields
I thought long and hard before raising this thread, and actually checked as many reliable sources as I could before posting.
I have worded the post with exquisite care (being aware of how hard some areas of the UK have been hit hard by this series of autumn storms (not all named))- specifically because I have been bitten very hard by posters on this forum for allegedly over hyping previous storms (and other matters), and am feeling very bruised by such criticism.
Some areas of the country need very, very little extra rain to tip them into a flood and/or landslide situation.
I am trying to be thoughtful and helpful to our overseas visitors.
I think the point about naming storms is a valid one to some extent, but I tend to sway more towards Nigel's point. This autumn has been extraordinary in terms of rainfall and we're only in November. There's months of this to go still and everywhere is completely saturated.
Publicising this one may be of particular importance in this case as the models have intensified the potential storm only in recent runs. Before that it was unremarkable.
Wind storms are now officially named in a coordinated fashion across Europe because there was a messy uncoordinated patchwork of semi-official and completely unofficial naming going on before that which really was confusing. This climaxed with the windstorm of 27 and 28 October 2013 which was variously referred to as Saint Jude, Christian, Simone, Carmen, and Allan across Europe.
Wind storms get named in the UK and Ireland when they are deemed to have the potential to cause ‘medium’ or ‘high’ impacts, with wind the primary consideration, generally needing to be forecast in excess of 80 km/h mean and/or gusts over 130 km/h.
There is already potential for the next named one to be as early as later this week (!) but I'll wait until it is officially called.
They don't get named willy-nilly; there weren't any named at all in the last season in the UK / Ireland / Netherlands sector until August and they were really only then because of the unusual time of year. The Met Office is possibly the most conservative about naming of the three organisations involved.
Concerned Local does make a valid point about London, that I didn't up the thread. We've barely had any weather of note here. The rest of the country has suffered much worse than the south east.
Sending all of you in the UK good wishes that the latest storm passes over you quickly and with little impact.
We live in the Pacific NW and although we get large yearly rainfall, it seems nothing like the UK has been suffering from.
On the topic of weather problems I'm wondering if anyone here who lives in Britain noticed the smoke from the huge forest fires in Western Canada where I live. I read back in the summer that the smoke had crossed the Atlantic and was hitting Europe. But when I was traveling around England and Wales in October, most people I talked to said they heard about the fires but didn't notice any smoke.
Greg,
As I remember it the smoke from the Canadian fires was more of a high level thing. It was there, making things a bit hazier than they would normally have been, but not really noticeable to most people. As I remember it there were a number of quite spectacular sunsets and sunrises which were said to be because of the smoke and particulates in the atmosphere. Unless that reason had been pointed out to people by meteorologists and news reports, I don't think most people would have known the cause.
In Ireland which will be first and hardest hit only the east of the country is under serious warning.
In fact there was a red weather warning for counties Dublin, Kildare, Laois, Louth, Meath, Wicklow, Offaly and Westmeath until 08:00 (the east) but also for counties Clare, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Galway and Roscommon from 02:00 until 05:00 (all of which are in the west). This led to the cancellation of some ferry services, delays to some flights, the cancellation of many overnight coach services in Ireland, a 50mph speed restriction across Irish Rail on Monday morning, and the cancellation of all Dublin Bus and LUAS services on Monday morning. All significant matters which affect real travellers.
Also as I write the loss of power to at least 58,000 properties across the Republic- a number expected to increase.
On its projected path this one will skim most of England and Scotland.
There are still warnings in place for a large part of the North of England essentially from Manchester to almost the Scottish Border. That includes several large cities and major conurbations, as well as the majority of the Lake District. When the Lake District is affected that often causes travel disruption on rail lines between the rest of England and Scotland. The storm hasn't really hit yet, but already the western Lake District has torrential rain and one rail line is already closed.
The effects might even be relevant to travellers well away from the eye of the storm. We are currently sat on the 10.30 train from Euston to Glasgow going home to Preston. We haven’t reached Milton Keynes yet due to a fallen tree blocking the fast line in the area meaning we are on the slow line behind a number of stopping trains. I guess we’re going to end up between 15 and 30 minutes late, which is no issue for us personally with only the level of compensation we will get not yet resolved. But it could be more frustrating for others on here.
Flights to the US from Dublin airport are departing as normal this morning.
Apart from the United one where the inbound ended up being diverted to Glasgow to refuel? Some other planes not from the USA ended up in Cork & Shannon after aborted attempts to land at Dublin.
West of Ireland seems to have fared the worst although I'm seeing reports of damage & trees down around a lot of the Midlands, and the North East is due a good dose of rain. Some nice sunny spells around now if that's any consolation!
My flight from Exeter to Belfast at lunchtime today was cancelled - the plane never left Belfast. Tiny plane, high winds. Loads of flights out of Belfast were badly delayed although I think only the Exeter one was actually cancelled.
I was supposed to be on it on a business trip. Luckily I’ve got a business travel team sorting alternatives because there wasn’t a huge amount of help there.
Some of the current travel disruption (and it is only some)-
The Fishguard to Rosslare ferry remains cancelled tonight and the Stena ferries from Holyhead have been departing up to 45 minutes early all day (they have long turn round times at each end so have been cutting into that) to give themselves additional passage time.
The Isle of Man Steam Packet has also been cancelled all day.
All lake cruises in the Lake District have been cancelled all day.
On the trains-
In Wales there have been several line closures due to trees being blown down- as far as I know the only current one is at Ruabon;
In Scotland the West Highland line has been closed by flooding- trains cancelled between Glasgow and Crianlarich, line reopened, will take time for the service to recover; also line closed Dumfries to Kilmarnock by flooding.
Leeds to Settle railway closed by several floods, no road transport possible due to poor road conditions.
Carlisle to Lancaster via the coast has been struggling all day, but is open after a fashion
Leeds to Doncaster railway closed due to overhead electric lines [OHLE] down- diversions/cancellations/bus replacements
Darlington to Newcastle- ongoing issues following a landslide caused by one of the earlier storms;
West Coast Main Line- closed Crewe to Warrington- OHLE down. John New's train (bound for Glasgow) reached Preston 60 minutes late after the downed tree. It terminated short there as did the 0930 and 1130 from Euston, so pax for Scotland had to transfer to other services, some arriving in excess of 2 hours late. This has had knock on effects to afternoon southbound trains, now aggravated by the OHLE issues Warrington to Crewe.
This is just what I am aware of.
This forum is not designed to track every train, flight, ferry etc- use operators websites/apps in such situations, for service specific information.
On any such occasion a PM is the best way to get individualised assistance, especially if stuck. If needs be and in the Lake District that would extend to personal, physical assistance if physically possible.
In the Irish Republic the latest news is that about 70,000 homes and businesses are still without power (which will include hotels and restaurants) having been off all day. On Irish Rail the Limerick to Athenry line still has a TRS, the rest of the network is recovering from earlier disruption.
I can confirm that we were an hour late into Preston. Or rather that we were either 59 or 60 minutes late. I await my email from Avanti confirming whether we get half or all of our fares back.
There was much confusion at Preston. 5 minutes before our arrival the train manager announced that the train would terminate at Preston and passengers for stations to Glasgow should wait for the following train running c45 minutes late. He had no more information as to why and had actually been told by a passenger. Then, as everyone started to get off in Preston there were announcements that the train would after all be carrying on to Glasgow.
There seem to be all sorts of issues across the rail system just now.
None of this is International news. As far as I'm aware nobody has died because of Debi so far. But, whilst it is not a world wide event, it is one that will affect visitors to many parts of the UK today and, as such, seems to be a perfectly correct item to post on a website dedicated to travellers.
I appreciate any and all weather postings. It’s hard enough to find specific weather across the United States on a daily basis, let alone international weather. Some storms die out but others increase their intensity, so some of us consider it helpful. Before Nigel mentioned it, I wasn’t aware of just how much rain areas of the UK had received this year. However, I do know from years in the PNW that saturated ground can play havoc with stability of not only trees, but transportation structures as well. Those are things that affect travelers, so they’re relevant.
At 6.48pm this evening Northern Rail posted a red weather notice with immediate effect on the Lancaster to Morecambe, Lancaster to Barrow to Carlisle and Oxenholme to Windermere lines- that means that all further trains are suddenly cancelled and no road replacement transport of any type will be provided. In effect people still travelling are stranded.
Also only one train from the south has run all evening north of Preston towards Glasgow, running two hours late. The last service may run, time will tell.
Cumbria has also had too many road closures to itemise today due to weather incidents- the last notice I have seen still has two closures in force, and there have been at least 3 road accidents today on the M6 (freeway) through the county.
the winds are often highest in the southern part of the tail. That is predicted for tomorrow. Much of the East, the East Midlands, the West Midlands, Staffordshire, Lincolnshire, as far south as The Wash, and pretty much everything east of the Pennines most of the way to Scotland is under an Amber warning for very high winds from 5am tomorrow until tomorrow mid-day.
I'm in that area.
Visitors are warned to be alert, and before trying to take any form of transport including trains, to double check.
Many of the trees still have leaves, and falling or flying trees don't check if the people in the way are residents or visitors.
This thread has been heavily cleaned out. It is our expectation that everyone can share their information without making negative inferences to that of others. We're all here to help.
Not on my way to England (right now) but I really appreciate knowing what our friends there are going through - of course, in addition to potential help for current travelers. Thanks, all, for sharing!
Edit: I guess I was writing at the same time as the Webmaster.
On the Barrow to Carlisle line the line on Tuesday morning remains closed to all traffic with no trains or replacement buses between Sellafield and Workington, and very sparse service between Barrow and Sellafield.
This will remain in place all day today at least.
Use other modes of transport. By train travel via Carlisle then Lancaster to Barrow.
Yes I am personally inconvenienced by this mess, at the start of a 19 hour journey, deep joy.
Small update from London if anyone's interested... Slow news day lol
Small storm with heavy rain, lightning and pea-sized hail blew through earlier. Always have to check my drains are clear when I hear heavy rain like that as I'm in a basement flat in an old house. Everything was A-ok. Settled down to steady heavy rain, light winds. Not that bad. Eddie Bauer jacket and baseball cap weather for our North American friends :P
The red notice was lifted for Barrow to Carlisle unexpectedly at 0721 (having been imposed for the day at 0500), two trains got through in each direction, then they found that the storm had knocked out all signalling on one of the exposed coastal stretches of line. So pilot man or pilot woman working in this case, had to be introduced.
So my train was suddenly cancelled in mid journey (in the 15 minutes it took me to walk from home to station) and the following hourly train cancelled 6 minutes after it should have started its journey. With earlier cancellations this led to a 4 1/2 hour service gap.
It is important to say that both website/app and even staff communications were not keeping up with events, not reflecting actuality.
At this point I have missed my once a day National Express bus from Carlisle to Truro and am looking at an emergency rail ticket to Birmingham to catch it up.
Mercifully control have ordered up a bus replacement from the local bus heritage trust museum (the normal emergency bus provider), but not told staff. So a transfer at an unstaffed station to the bus. We only knew about the bus running from the Network Rail incident controller!
Thanks to Alistair, the driver, (who I know) we miss out a station and I get to Carlisle with 10 minutes In hand, having had 3 hours spare under Plan A.
And National Express turn up 6 minutes early, so only have a 4 minute wait.
A bit too tight for comfort.
Missing out a station made the difference between success and failure, but the chance of anyone being there was very small.
So a few grey hairs later I am now on my 512 mile, 16 hour National Express bus.
Oh and Avanti West Coast currently have up to 60 minute delays due to flooding in Scotland.
Positive point, I get better than a full refund- a free return journey to any Northern Rail destination.
PS- being over 60 the National Express journey all the way to Truro costs £15, mid week. A flat fare. So that would apply if I had joined the bus at its start in Edinburgh and was staying on until Penzance. That is a 23 hour journey.
Quoting myself from further up the thread...
Small storm with heavy rain, lightning and pea-sized hail blew through earlier. Always have to check my drains are clear when I hear heavy rain like that as I'm in a basement flat in an old house. Everything was A-ok. Settled down to steady heavy rain, light winds.
One strictly for the weather nerds, but I saw an interesting article talking about the exact weather system I posted about on Tuesday. It seems it flummoxed the forecast modelling tools, which wildly underestimated the amount of rainfall.
That is an everyday happening up where I live, where on a daily basis the models can't cope with the local geography, and get it hugely wrong.
Sometimes the results are glorious like the tremendously vivid rainbow I saw over Tebay motorway services on Tuesday, from one of Debi's cloudbursts.
And the same was true of Storm Frederico last night. Almost no warning and it's severity was heavily under stated. A local storm in Devon and Cornwall which has caused me issues today. Nothing I couldn't work around but a nuisance. Debi on Tuesday, Frederico today. I may do a TR eventually, but when I get home firstly I have a mountain of field work reports to write up on the last 3 days.
One strictly for the weather nerds, but I saw an interesting article talking about the exact weather system I posted about on Tuesday. It seems it flummoxed the forecast modelling tools, which wildly underestimated the amount of rainfall.
With Frederico the reverse was true - up until 12 hours before the rain and showers could be extensive across much of England but changed to little rain north of the Thames / M4. Main action was correctly identified to be in France, hence their sector naming it.
I get seriously exasperated when I get "corrected" like this. Oxford is 200 miles from Devon, where I actually was. Early afternoon when I checked little or nothing was forecast for Devon. I expected to be on the Teignmouth ferry this morning. By 7pm the forecast was saying 40 to 50 mph winds and heavy rain for Cornwall especially and up into Devon, and I am thinking storm, why name an average low pressure system a storm?
Overnight in Paignton I was woken several times from deep sleep by the wind howling round the guest house and the rain was tropical rain forest style.
If you weren't there please, please do not tell me otherwise.
Then this morning passing through Dawlish still high waves breaking well over the new sea wall onto the tracks.
And at that stage still torrential and lengthy showers which finally clearered just as I got to Exeter.
It well exceeded the forecasts. For all I know France may have been worse, but it was a wild night in coastal Devon. Fact.
No "correction" in my post. Since Devon is not north of the M4 I made no reference to the conditions there at all, or what you might have experienced. Hope that helps.
I was actually not responding to your message anyway but GerryM's. I have added a quote in to make it plainer.
