The Great Storm Of October 1987, from a duty forecasters view

When people talk about the night of 15–16 October 1987, they usually recall shattered greenhouses, uprooted oaks, and that infamous midday TV broadcast. But my memory of that night is framed by the glow of monitors in the operations room, the smell of stale coffee, and the terrifying realisation that the atmosphere was rewriting the rules right in front of us. The lead-up to the event was a masterclass in meteorological ambiguity, and sitting at the forecasting desk, we were caught right in the middle of it.

The atmosphere had been restless all week. We were tracking a depression forming out in the Atlantic, nestled near the right entrance of a powerful jet stream. It was a textbook setup for rapid low-pressure development, but pinning down its exact track and intensity was agonising. We were caught in a brutal tug-of-war between the computer guidance. Our models, both the global and fine mesh, were stubbornly underestimating the rapid deepening of the low. Crucially, they predicted the system would track further south, projecting the worst of the winds over the English Channel and the continent, largely sparing southern England.

Meanwhile, models from other forecasting centres were telling a much more sinister story. They correctly picked up on the extreme atmospheric instability, projecting a northerly track that would send the cyclone barrelling straight into our coast. But as the event drew closer, some of those very models flip-flopped, backing away from their most extreme solutions and muddying the waters even further. Compounding our misery was a massive blind spot: rough seas had forced commercial ships in the Atlantic to reroute, starving us of the crucial real-time marine observations we desperately needed to verify what the computers were saying. Faced with this conflicting noise, we leaned heavily on our domestic fine mesh model. It was a fateful decision.

The afternoon of Thursday the 15th gave absolutely no hint of the violence brewing. The pressure gradient was slack, and winds were eerily light across the country. It was in this calm environment that the reassuring afternoon broadcast went out to the public, stating that a hurricane wasn't on the way. Technically, it was an extratropical cyclone, not a tropical hurricane—but sitting at my desk later that evening, semantics ceased to matter.

As darkness fell, the depression began to undergo explosive cyclogenesis—a weather bomb. We watched, horrified, as the barometers on our screens went into freefall. By 18:00 UTC, the low had deepened to 964 hPa. Forecasters crowded around the anemograph traces, watching the ink violently swing as alarming, unprecedented pressure drops came rolling in. Just before midnight, the depression crossed into the western English Channel at 953 hPa. At 01:35 UTC, realising the sheer scale of the unfolding disaster, we issued a critical warning to the Ministry of Defence, advising that civil authorities would likely need military assistance.

Outside, temperatures inexplicably spiked as the warm front passed, and then the wind hit. We stared in disbelief as coastal anemometers registered staggering gusts of 120 mph before the equipment simply snapped and stopped transmitting altogether.

Dawn revealed a landscape that looked like a warzone. Millions of trees had been flattened, and the power grid was crippled. But the true weight of the storm hit us when the casualty reports started coming in. Hearing that 22 people across the UK and the continent had tragically lost their lives was gut-wrenching. In the ops room, the academic fascination of tracking an unprecedented cyclone evaporated instantly, replaced by a heavy, profound sense of human tragedy.

For those of us clocking out, our exhaustion was eclipsed by shock. The aftermath fundamentally changed our profession. The subsequent inquiries forced a massive, badly needed investment into supercomputing, satellite networks, and forecaster training. It proved that a slight miscalculation in a model's track meant the difference between a breezy night and a national catastrophe.

Decades later, researchers analysing our data from that night discovered a localised, descending jet of incredibly fast, evaporating air hooked like a scorpion's tail around the storm's southern flank—a phenomenon they finally named the Sting Jet. Today, thanks to the lessons we learned the hard way, we can see these storms coming days in advance. But for those of us working the desk in October 1987, it remains the ultimate, humbling reminder of who is really in charge: the atmosphere.

Very good Brian.

Certainly not something I am keen to experience again. I was living on the south coast then, and the roar of the wind and the sound of crashing and debris blowing around in the dark was terrifying, and something I'll never forget !

Sounds terrifying Steve. 

When 'Hurricane Debby' struck here in the early 60s, The roar could be heard before the it even hit (and it apparently hit very suddenly) My own parents as kids remember this and many older people who experienced it said the same thing. I personally don't rule out possible tornadic activity being the cause of this, as whole woodlands in the region were wiped out in minutes. 

There's a piece on the Met Office website here:

https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/learn-about/how-forecasts-are-made/history-of-numerical-weather-prediction 

It suggests the "Fine Mesh" model was implemented for "routine weather forecasting" in 1985, so not too long before the Great Storm.

I had heard that this is what happened in 1987

Just my luck that I was away abroad when the week the storm struck so I missed what was probably the storm of my lifetime (at least in SE England where I live)

However, speaking to some other weather fanatics when I got back, I was told that the old "Weather For Farmers and Growers" (as the weekly forecast on Sunday lunchtime was called in those days) actually nailed it but then the daily forecasts backed off right up until the Thursday evening itself.

True; ironically it was Michael Fish who also gave that previous week's forecast. 

A memorable event for us; wife with eyepatch after operation, self with both wrists in plaster after M/C accident, and a tree on top of the house, all at the same time. 

The weight of the tree(a 150-yr old beech from across the lane) was taken by a retaining wall, so it only swept off slates and gutters. A friend with a wood stove took 7 tons of firewood away from our garden.