Scary Storm Darragh

This weekend Storm Darragh hit the UK with a red warning being issued by the met office for the coast of Wales and around the Bristol Channel. We had some damage and problems, but generally we didn’t suffer too badly.

Storm Darragh Weather Warnings

Preparing

Friday saw the Met Office warning about Storm Darragh bringing very strong winds to us, so I spent some time preparing. First of all checked the greenhouses were secure. Capping and clips in place, vents closed and a quick check that nuts and bolts were tight in the frame.

The Eden greenhouse door was closed and locked, with a couple of plastic pots full of soil placed by it to stop it the door rattling and blowing open. The double doors of the Vitavia greenhouse were clipped together with a large spring clamp and a 20kg bag of sand placed by the doors.

Checked the polytunnel was shut and quickly cleaned out the droppings tray in the chicken coop, knowing I wouldn’t have chance over the weekend. Moved the stack of plastic chairs from the patio into the potting shed and turned the plastic table upside down with a water-filled parasol base on top to weigh it down.

Double-checked the large shed’s door was properly shut and having done all I could outside to prepare, headed inside. They were talking about power cuts being probable, so made sure the torches and battery lamps were working. Spare batteries? Check!

Finally, turned the upright freezer’s temperature down. It’s supposed to hold temperature for 10 hours without power, so I figured setting it at -30ºC would give an increased safety margin if the power went out. Frozen food should be at between -18ºC and -20ºC. The chest freezer is rated at 24 hours and was running at -22ºC.

Red Alert!!

Outside it was quite calm and I wondered if this much trumpeted storm was going to actually materialise. Then just before 7pm the mobile phone alert happened. At first I thought it was a noise on the telly, then I realised it was a phone emergency alert. Bit of a heart stopping moment when I thought Russian missiles were on the way, but the message made it clear it was about the storm.

This ain’t so bad..

When I went to bed things weren’t too bad, so I was becoming increasingly sceptical about this storm’s existence. Awoke a bit before 4 am with the rain rattling on the windows and the wind howling. The cats decided the safest thing was to sleep on me. Having realised they weren’t joking with their red alert, I was quite pleased I’d taken it seriously.

Dawn

Once dawn arrived I could just see the corner of the Vitavia was standing as was the Eden, but the wooden wind-break in front of the Eden was flexing alarmingly. I felt sure it would break and destroy the greenhouse.

Eden Greenhouse Windbreak – positioned to seaward it really helps with winds although it cuts out some light

About 9 am the wind calmed a little, so I checked the Vitavia and realised the doors had blown off. There’s absolutely nothing to be done when it’s storming and seeing how the winds could now get in to it, I’d have bet good money that it would be a mangled mess soon. Never try moving sheets of glass in high winds – that way lies nasty accidents.

Power Cut

So a day spent indoors and as things eased back a bit being grateful that we’d not had a power cut at least. Turned the freezers back to normal and, of course, the power went just before midnight. We often get short power cuts and flickers here, so I thought it would be back on in an hour at most. The morning arrived and still no power.

Break Out the Generator

The upright freezer was now sitting at -15ºC and despite having the wood burner going overnight, the house was cooling. The gas central heating doesn’t work without the electric pump. Time to get the generator we bought from Aldi about ten years ago out of its box. Oops, no petrol, so a quick trip to the petrol station.

Amazingly it started but kept dying after a little while. Had given up trying to get it to run for more than 5 seconds and was considering moving the contents of the upright to the chest and what to sacrifice as the chest is pretty full already when the power returned. Our neighbour popped down, had a fiddle and got it running. He was near the head of the line when engineering genes were issued, unlike me, who missed out on them. In fact he’s so good that the mains power came back on! Still, next time we have a working emergency generator.

Damage Review

The Vitavia greenhouse lost a side pane in the night but surprisingly was otherwise standing firm. Gary came over and cleaned up the broken glass and we had enough glass of the right sizes to replace the broken panes.

Repaired Vitavia Greenhouse

The polythene roof had ripped off the bio-secure chicken run. Happily we’ve enough material to replace it. The avian flu panics may have gone away but the hens appreciate the rain being kept out.

Last thing on the list was fallen leaves. They lay in drifts around the back door and they’d blown under the door to cover the floor in the old cow shed. Out with the leaf blower / vacuum mulcher and bag them up to become leaf mould next year.

We were lucky

Compared with many others, we were lucky. The house roof is fine and we’ve still got two greenhouses. One decorative conifer blown down but no problem with the big trees. I think this was the worst storm we’ve experienced and we’ve had some bad ones over the last years.

According to the Beaufort scale, winds over 73mph are Force 12 or Hurricane force. We were on the edge of a Category 2 Hurricane with winds over 96 mph. It does seem that every year we have more powerful storms and I don’t see much prospect of that trend changing.