By Philip Eden
The Environment Agency confirmed on Friday 6 December that the storm surge early that morning along the east coast of England was the highest for sixty years - since the night of January 31/February 1 1953 to be precise. At its peak the surge amounted to 5.1 metres at Hull, and to 3.2 metres at Sheerness, eclipsing the storm surge of early-February 1983. Since 1953 sea defences have been improved out of all recognition, though sea water still made inroads in some areas, notably at Jaywick, near Clacton in Essex, at Boston in Lincolnshire, and more notably at Rhyl in Denbighshire.
The Thames Barrier was closed during the early hours of that Friday morning for the first time since late-December 2012. In all there have been 121 closures since the barrier was first opened in 1982, 77 of them to counter storm surges and 44 to deal with river flooding heading downstream. There were no closures at all in 2011 for the first time since 1997.
Thursday's severe gale was the worst in northern Britain only since early-January 2012. Highest sustained winds were between 50 and 55mph, and peak gusts measured on the morning of Thursday 5 December reached 93mph at Altnaharra, Sutherland, 89mph at Drumalbin, Lanarkshire, and 89mph also at West Guerinish, on the island of South Uist. The highest in England was 86mph at Emley Moor, West Yorkshire. Gusts as high as 112mph were recorded remotely at two high level sites - Great Dun Fell on the border between Cumbria and Durham, and Cairnwell in Perthshire. The highest gust at a low-level site on 3 January 2012 was 105mph at Salsburgh, Lanarkshire.
Mercifully, the winds had eased by the time of the high tide early on the Friday morning. The cold snap that was predicted for Thursday and Friday (5 and 6 December) in Scotland and northern England was a bit of a damp squib. The temperature climbed to 1.7C at Loch Glascarnoch in Wester Ross on Thursday afternoon, the lowest maximum temperature that day, while it fell to minus 6.0C at Dalwhinnie in Inverness-shire early Friday morning, and the day's lowest maximum on Friday was minus 1.7C at Lerwick in Shetland. By contrast, the temperature reached 53F (12C) in Cornwall and Devon the same day.
There were frequent snow showers too in northern and eastern Scotland, but nowhere did the snow depth exceed Aviemore's 5 cm.
© Philip Eden