The UK government has sent an emergency alert to the mobile phones of millions of Britons as Storm Darragh is set to spark flooding and travel chaos this weekend.
Christmas events and flights were cancelled, and football games postponed as the 90mph winds made there way across the Atlantic Ocean today.
Brits in the worst hit areas were urged to ‘stay indoors’ and to strap down their Christmas decorations as the Met Office issued a rare ‘danger to life’ red warning for tomorrow.
The ‘significant disruption’ warning from 3am until 11am covers most of the coast of Wales including Cardiff and Swansea, as well as parts of Bristol and North Somerset.
Three million people across parts of southwest England and Wales have now been sent an emergency alert at 6.45pm.
We can read the weather forecast. I knew this insanity would be misused and it has. As I’d switched this stupidity off on my phone, it didn’t get to me. Mrs L Elect did get it and came downstairs to ask me what it was all about. This is unnecessary scaremongering. These storms are a bloody nuisance, but they are typical for this time of the year. I may have to alter my plans for the weekend as I did two weeks ago. I’ll make a decision nearer the time, but I do not need a bloody alert from the government to tell me the bleedin’ obvious. Fuck off already.
This is all part of the need to convince us all that the weather is constantly getting worse and worse due to climate change. Climate Change is far too useful to those who love to tell us how to live our lives for them to admit that it isn’t an issue. We now have over four decades of failed doom laden predictions that say that they are wrong but the consequences of admitting it would be just too horrendous.
In the seventies the ‘coming Ice Age’ was all the rage. I looked out the window and there are no Polar Bears. There are also no blue and white chunks of sky that were due to fall after Brexit. Nor are there any palm trees ‘because of’ man made global warming.
The climate depends upon a huge set of noisy data. The noise makes finding a real ‘signal’ extremely difficult, especially if you are open to finding the signals you want to fit your model. The model is not reality. The map is not the terrain.
You know, I’d forgotten all about this!
I was out working in the wind and rain. I’ve seen worse. Much worse. Don’t see what all the fuss is about.
T shirt and shorts in the West Riding today…must be Warble Gloaming
I am in Wales.
It’s a bit windy.
Used to get storms like this when I were a nipper.
Had a special name for when it was like this as well.
We used to call it “weather”.
This weekend? It’s raining and dead calm, no wind at all. Yesterday was the same.
It’s blowing a hoolie down in the south west.
The wife asked me if it was safe to go shopping, so I said she would be fine. She replied “that’s great, get your shoes on, you’re coming with me”.
Damn. That was a mistake……
It’s really rough in North Devon, debris and fallen trees blocking roads, just heard Lynton and Lynmouth is cut off.
It suddenly struck me that, deliberately or not, we are being trained to be risk averse.
I’m quite happy to receive a message about our local flood plains being flooded but I now find the warnings about the *risk* of flooding, even locally, to be infantilising.
Just as the *risk* of Brexit, the *risk* of COVID and the *risk* of Climate Change are perhaps all aimed at getting us to put our trust in The Powers That Be. And how has that worked so far?
That is going to backfire on them
Govt: come on everybody! We need to fight Russia for freedoms and democracy (and MIC profits)!
Everybody: ooh. Er, sounds a bit risky. No thanks.
“getting us to put our trust in The Powers That Be”
Yep.
One of the residents of flooded Tenbury Wells was complaining that the Council did not deliver sand bags to her in time. If I lived somewhere, built on a floodplain, that had flooded seven times in four years, I think I would have acquired my own sandbags by now. And probably made other provisions.
Back when I was into doing masochistic endurance events, being super fit helps with my diabetes, I did The Rudolph Romp. This is a 24 mile trail run through the Yorkshire Wolds, tougher than a marathon because of the terrain. Being held in December there is always a chance that you will get rained on and that year was no exception. Sitting in my cosy living room just now and my wife has just mentioned that The Rudolf Romp is today. Rather breezy and pissing down would best describe today’s weather.
Thanks for the reminder. I had the emergency alerts turned off on my old phone but had forgotten to do it on my new one. Emergencies are things like tsunamis and earthquakes, not windiness. I don’t want the government in control of my phone.
Paul Homewood is onto them as always. Of particular interest is a newspaper report of storms from a hundred years ago.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/12/07/storm-darragh/#more-76964
I live in a semi rural area. Growing up, I can remember having to do my paper round, and walk to school, in snow that was knee deep. That snow lasted for weeks, and helping my dad and neighbours to shovel snow off the road we lived on so they could get to work became a nice little winter money spinner. We didn’t get nannying warnings about bad weather back then. We just assumed that the time of year would bring some bad weather with it. These days, it seems that some people need to be told to take an umbrella with them if it’s slightly overcast. The point is though, we get storms every year, always have. Those of us with fully functioning brains know what to do. We don’t either the Met office, whom I don’t trust to give an accurate report, or the government, sticking their noses in.
I just found this and had to share it.
The Met Office have issued a Yellow Darkness Warning! ?? It will start getting dark around 3:53pm. People are advised to exercise caution and not travel unless absolutely necessary.
My car automatically switches the lights on if there is enough ‘darkness’.
Here in East Yorkshire we have just had a four and a half hour power cut that I believe was caused by a fallen tree. It is also too windy for the wind turbines which are all stationary at the moment.