I live in South Wales near the Severn Bridge. The first we knew about was when we got up and watched the news next morning. We just couldn't believe it as we had just had a normal night with hardly a breath of wind.
I remember that well i was 8 months pregnant at the time but live in Scotland so we got the tail end of it. Still remember that weatherman Michael Fish was it ? saying that there wasn't a storm on the way , ended up with a red face the next day. :)
I was 10 at the time. Sadly my uncle had just died of cancer and had been cremated the previous day. His ashes were due to be buried in a memorial spot that day ande despite all the damage and chaos caused, this still happned..........but only just!
Woke up the next morning to find half of my dad's greenhouse covering my window. I couldn't drive to work as the only road out of where I lived was blocked by a huge tree trunk.
It was sad to see the village green devastated ~ trees from my grandfathers childhood gone in one swoop. At the time of the storm I was studying floristry, and worked a couple of days a week in a florists. I managed to get a lift to work, and upon arrival I saw that the window had been smashed in by a flying branch.
If it had happened during the day lives may well have been lost..
My husband and I had been visiting his family in Wiltshire for the previous week and were on our way back to NY in the evening...the first we heard of it were the news reports when we got back to the U.S....felt like we had a lucky escape!
Our family slept through it all and didn't know it had happened, just thought it looked a bit windswpet outside.
My dad got up and went to work and me, brother and mum (I was in Junior School, bro infants) did the usual running late routine and I was cr@pping it I was going to get told off. So when I got up and realised we'd slept through the alarms we set we just got ready really quick. When we got to the school gates and they were closed we all stood there uhmming and ahhing for a while and then someone came by and told us what had happened! So we went home (and back to sleep probabaly).
I was still living at home with my parents, the house they still live in today, which backs on to a park full of trees. My bedroom was at the back of the house and I spent most of the night with my eyes out on stalks, lol!
Yes I remember it well. I slept through it and when I got up in the morning I could not believe my eyes.
Looking out the kitchen window, there was no fences in my garden and a tree was down!
Out on the streets it was worst and I did not go to work, as my son was about 5 and the school were shut.