Preparing for winter III

My_Feet_Hurt

Hi all,

I`m way down south - about 30 miles from the coast. We`ve had heavy winds and rain all night. I`ve been awake since 3am as we have a large tree outside our bedroom window and I was worried about it falling over....lots of new creaking noises:eek: lol. Or maybe I shouldn`t lol.....

In our back garden we have a wooden pergola up against the house. It`s covered in corragated plastic - so it`s sheltered and I can put washing under there when it rains;) - my neighbours either side have them too lol. Today though, one neighbour woke to find their pergola roof is just about shredded and the other neighbour has one sheet of plastic flapping about. Bit dangerous - she should really take it down incase it blows off and hits someone. Ours is ok at the minute - TOUCH WOOD. I am checking every five minutes or so though `cos it keeps banging and I know I`ve been lucky so far....

Keep warm and keep safe everyone.

m
xx

Confuzzled

the wind woke me up this morning, howling like a banshee, so as i was puttering around doing my morning routine i looked out the kitchen window and see the back fence has blow mostly over. in the few minutes it took me to change into proper clothes and get outside it had blown totally over, taking out the neighbours whirlygig (never seen them use it in over 2 years but still not nice for them)

the bins are a mess, i tried stacking them lids together to keep them from opening up and i chained my daughters bike to the metal pole for the clothes line (a proper one not a weak whirlygig) and laid it on the ground so it didn't bang around or blow away! so i get upstairs, look again and see that one of my bins is now in that same neighbours back garden :eek:

i've just left it for now, nothing i can do i have nothing i can safely tie them too or anything i can really tie them with. as it was i barely managed to lock the gate again as it's so warped right now and if i didn't manage to lock it again the wind would have it off so i guess the neighbours can 'borrow' my bin for a bit!

i was watching the news and they said edinburgh has reported 102mph gusts and i don't doubt that, this is every bit as bad as that bad storm at the beginning of december. they also said a woman had been walking to work and had been hit by a flying door! thankfully she was ok and a taxi driver saw her home bless him. i most certainly won't be going outside again today for love or money!

stay safe everyone

[Deleted User]

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_warnings.html?day=2

lot of red up north. No real warnings on bbc. Not good enough!!! people could been warned to tie stuff down

rising_from_the_ashes

Keep hearing stuff hit the patio doors which is a bit disconcerting:eek: and *think* it's the bark from the flower beds ..... (never happened before that I know of).

Really glad I went and put the car in - can hear something hitting against the side of the house (where the drive is) .... either the bins or, more likely, next doors flower pots :mad:

Not very well forcast on the weather - they said there'd be high gusts but not sustained high winds on the one I saw ... been sustained since at least 4am!

[Deleted User]

scroll down to the comments. Lots of good stuff by craig.m

http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=412&c=5

Eenymeeny

I hope that everyone's safe out there. Confuzzled, sorry to hear about the damage that you have got. I can see neighbour's wheelies scattered down their garden. No sign of mine... does that mean that they've stayed put or wandered off in a different direction? (I set up a network of bugee cords after the last storms, this will be a good test )
What an interesting link that is justamum, I had to restrain myself from spending all morning reading it! (I try to 'skim' in the morning then read in depth at night when I shouldn't be getting on with other things:o) Just a point about adding shelves.. we've found our back extension seems a lot warmer than last winter since we added shelves to store all of those extra toilet rolls etc!:D
Confuzzled, pleased to see that I'm not the only one to be thrilled to bits to have extra 'medals' added.:) Congratulations!:beer:
Stay safe everyone. A1 closed here this morning because of lorries overturned. Think that it's a home day today if you can possibly wangle it!

rising_from_the_ashes

An afterthought ... is it me or has the number of really windy / stormy days got worse over the past few years?

Thinking back around 10 years or so ago, I remember having a couple of really windy day / bad storms each year but they seem to be getting more & more frequent over recent years.

Eenymeeny

I agree with you risingfromtheashes, windy days used to be an isolated event when I used to walk my son to school about 25 years ago. My sister lives in an outlying district here which is high and used to get snowed in for days. Now she says that storm damage is much more of a problem.

Waxy_Bean

Aggghhh - we've had 2 fence panels down in south London. I need to see if I can dig out the deeds and identify whose responsibility the fence is.

seraphina

Power went off at home today at about 8am. Came into work for a shower and the power went off here too - thankfully I have a laptop and the servers are all on generator back up. However, I can find NO information from any of the power companies saying they are aware of the problem - does anyone know how to find this? Our distributer is UK Power Networks.