Oh What A Time... - #44 Weather (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

This week we’re talking about unique weather events through history. From the great freeze of 1899 that plunged Miami to sub-zero temperatures, the great storm (in the UK) of 1987 (and how badly Michael Fish got it all BANG WRONG) and of course, the LONG-HOT-SUMMER-OF-NINETEEN-SEVENTY-SIX (which Elis’ parents WILL NOT STOP GOING ON ABOUT). Plus there’s even more Jeremy Bentham bantz. And if you want to get in touch with the show, you know what to do: [e-mail] And YES! You may have spotted a new numbering system. Well, we haven’t gone straight from episode #39 to episode #44 by accident (!), we have in fact retroactively applied episode numbers to old subscriber specials: #40 Heroes (OWAT: Full Timer Edition) #41 Gifts (OWAT: Full Timer Edition) #42 Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll (OWAT: Full Timer Edition) #43 Protests (OWAT: Full Timer Edition) When informed of this, Tom Craine said he felt “absolutely no emotion whatsoever” - but nonetheless, there’s the explanation for those who need it. If you're impatient and want both parts in one lovely go next time plus a whole lot more(!), why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 per month to support the show, you'll get: - two bonus episodes every month! - ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can also follow us on:  X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). Chris, Elis and Tom x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Eligibility and member terms apply. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh What a Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was just quite unpleasant and a bit dusty, really. I'm Tom Crane. And I'm Chris Scull.

And I'm Ellis James. Each week on this show, we'll be looking at a new historical subject. And today we're going to be discussing, your friend and mine, the weather. What's your favourite of the weathers? Let's get out of the way. What's your favourite of the weathers? I discussed this with my kids on the way to school yesterday. For me, a nice British summer's day in at number one.

I would say snow and no wind in at number two the weathers that can really get fucked are wind and rain and drizzle okay

however can I give a counterpoint to that wind and rain and drizzle means that you get to wear one of your lovely coats and I know you're a fan

of a lovely coat now that is true with your Stone Island your CP company one of those can come out you can't wear that midsummer. I'm actually one of the 21st century's great coat wearers. So that is true.

Who else is up there? Liam Gallagher, I'm guessing. Liam Gallagher. I would say Noel Gallagher. John Motson. Who else? So there's a gap on that podium now. Yes, there is.

Paddington. Oh, Paddington Bear is obviously one of the... He's one of the key coat wearers. My friend Tony, who wears a different coat every time I see him and each time it's exhilarating. Is it? Okay. Tony is up there. Fenners for X of Soccer AM.

Oh, yeah, Fenners. Always had some lovely coats. What did that say about us? Splitting our personality, Alyssa. I went with Paddington, Paddington Bear, and you went with Fenners from Soccer AM. You're pathetic, is what it says. You're pathetic. This is going to sound like a criticism.

Izzy is in her 40s. She's an adult. Mother of two. Every day, 365, regardless of the seasons or the weather, she asks me how she should be dressed in terms. So she'll say, up to about June,

she'll say, well, I need a cardigan today or a coat. And I'm like, can you not work it out? Come on. I understand why Izzy's asking you for advice because I think you might be one of the great coat diviners of the modern age because you actually gave you gave me a piece of advice

which I think about all the time and I literally thought about it this morning when you're struggling to put a coat on your kid because they just refuse to put it on you're like, you said to me once well just tell them, alright fine and then if they get cold they'll ask to put it on didn't you say that to me?

so I think about that all the time. So again, your coat advice. I had a situation with my five-year-old about two months ago where he was in his coat and the zip got stuck and we couldn't get him out of the coat. Oh, no. And he looked at me and said the sentence, am I going to be in this forever?

With a panic. I've never seen panic like that before because what a horrific situation that would be to be trapped in a coat for the rest of your life also kids grow and they can see exactly so what he was imagining was sort of like the hulk bursting out of his coat by about the age of nine the only way of it. Get you down the gym so you're muscly enough that you burst through the seams. I'm going to have to get you on the roids. Oh, no.

The quicker on the roids, the quicker you get out this bloody coat. Today we're discussing weather. And let me explain what we're talking about this week. We're talking about the Great Storm of 1987, which is one of my first memories. The big US freeze of 1899 and Britainain's hot summer of 1976 yeah indeed before we do that should we crack into a bit of correspondence do you reckon let's let's let's do that oh yes please and before we launch into the correspondence you know what we need

a correspondent sting a little audio sting to take us into correspondence and this is a task that i've decided it'd be great if you the audience mucked in on if you want to create a little audio sting for our correspondence i think you know the tone of the show have a go create for us a correspondent sting and who knows it might appear week on week i'd say keep it snappy i wouldn't go sort of like prog rock seven and a half minutes exactly but a bit of fun have your input and you know what we're not just going to play the one half minutes of Peter Gabriel style. Wailing guitar. Exactly. But a bit of fun. Have your input.

And do you know what? We're not just going to play the one. We're going to see, if you send them in, let's see how talented you are. I have faith. Elle, they're talented when it comes to emails. What have we been sent this week? They certainly are talented. I'm very excited about this email because it's from Simon Price, the music journalist. Oh, awesome.

Who is responsible for my favourite rock book ever, Everything, which is the book about the Manic Street Preachers. And he wrote an absolutely amazing book about the cure called Curepedia, which was out a few months ago. So I didn't know Simon listened to his podcast, so I've got a real spring on my step now. So here we go. Hello, chaps.

I studied philosophy at UCL, and it was very exciting to walk past the corpse of jeremy bentham the founder of modern utilitarianism every day on the way to lectures great start to an email it's nice in the first sentence someone's saying how funny it is to walk past a corpse and we're like one sentence in i love that and see his wise kindly waxwork head staring at me through the glass his actual head head was in a wooden box, which he was sitting on. At the end of my fourth year, I got elected as a sabbatical officer of the Student Union, running the entertainments. One of the tasks was to organise the annual foundation ball in February, for which we students were allowed to take over the public spaces of the entire college building.

This, in theory, included the cloisters in which Bentham's body sat. I couldn't resist it. I organised a disco in the cloisters. Brilliant. Complete with what? Perfect. Complete with... What? Perfect. Complete with flashing lights and a bouncy castle.

As his glass cabinet vibrated to the sounds of house rave, hip-hop, funk and rare groove, I feel sure that he would have approved of our attempt

to create the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Yours with a shot of costado, Simon. Do you know what? My memories of going out in Student Union and the state of people, I genuinely believe if Jeremy Bentham wasn't in a glass case, someone would have pulled him by the end of the game. Big time.

Absolutely. Coming like 2am someone is going to snog Jeremy Bennetford. That's what's going to happen if he's not in a glass case. Fantastic image that is. I think there's a missed opportunity here which is to sit in

behind the decks though, isn't there? Surely that's what you want, behind the ones and twos. I mean, that surely... Stack of vinyl. That surely happened. Behind the decks. In a weird way, putting him around students

is the worst thing you could do with Jeremy Bentham. The people most inclined for japes. Do you know what I mean? If you remember the letter that he wrote on his passing, saying that he wanted to be surrounded by friends as they had drinks and part of their merriment i like to think actually on some level he would have probably appreciated that things were going to change and he just wanted to be there part of the spirit of yeah

you know spending time with friends and all this sort of stuff so i think he probably would love it actually and yes you're right he would have loved it which is exactly why he has to be the first guest on the oh what time live show give the people what they want and yes he will be djing the after party 100 we'll set him up with a big pair of headphones one one headphone over across one ear obviously like a proper dj the other one's off so he's listening to the beat in the room as well and we'll also lay one of his dead arms on the vinyl as well he'll have one air pod in his wax head and the other air pod in his real head just to cover all bases now then as his glass cabinet vibrated to the sounds of house rave hip funk and rare groove i think house bit much for jeremy bent, 100%. Hip-hop, I'm thinking probably yes.

Now, funk and rare groove, I reckon Bentham might be nodding his head to that. It's difficult to imagine, isn't it? But trying to work out, you know, he's been brought back to life to attend this party. I mean, that's such a funny idea. A disco in the Cloisters. If there was a nightclub promoter that ran dance events in large venues around Britain

and each night there was going to be a different pickled preserved celebrity from the path behind the decks and you don't know who it's going to be. People are going, aren't they? Yeah. You know that the music's being played through Spotify. We know that. Yeah. You take that.

You don't know who they've dug up, who they've exhumed that week, but every week there's going to be a different pickled celebrity behind the deck. You're going. Yeah, yeah. So what's this? You're a 24-hour sort of modern northern soul all-nighter.

And you're like, who's that? Is that Pele? Bolton? Is that Clement Attlee? Oh, I would go, I would go. Well, Simon, thank you for emailing the show. And do read Cuepedia, because I was lucky enough to be sent a copy. It is an incredible piece of work.

If the rest of you have anything you want to send to us, we always love to hear from you. Here is how you get in contact with the show. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show you can email us at hello at oh what a time.com and you can follow us on instagram and twitter at oh what a time pod now clear off rbc avion visa lets you get there your way. Whether you want to... Suit up for peak ski season.

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play responsibly if you or someone you know has concerns about gambling visit connectsontario.ca so this week i'll be talking about the big u.s freeze of 1899 i'm going'll be talking about the big US freeze of 1899. I'm going to be talking about a sizzling hot summer here in the UK in 1976. It is crazy. And I am talking about the first weather event, first major weather event I remember. And one of the first really major news stories I remember. Yeah. So I've got very, I have vague memories of the miners' strike in Chernobyl. But this, and a few other things from around that time, I remember vividly. And I'm talking about the great storm of October 1987.

Famously, the great storm of 1987 wasn't supposed to happen. That was the view of the lunchtime weather forecast for the evening of the 15th and 16th of October, 1987, so about a fortnight before my seventh birthday. As the BBC's Michael Fish put it in his bulletin, after receiving messages from concerned viewers worried that a hurricane was on its way, don't worry, he said, if you're watching, there isn't.

Because I think someone in France had called. Or I can't remember, but someone in France had contacted the Met office. A letter had blown across the channel. That was the first clue. It was on its way. And it was bad.

Now, we'll talk about the details in a sec, but I'd not seen this until very recently, and it went viral very recently. Michael Fish saying, don't worry if you're watching, it isn't. That's really famous. And I feel sorry for Michael Fish, because if you're, how old am I, 43?

If you're sort of 42 and over, Michael Fish saying that is still a lot of people's go-to example of a massive cock up on a national school 100 because you believed him he was he was he was the weatherman but just to act as the prosecution against michael fish when have you ever tuned into the weather and the weather forecast has gone oh some people are saying this is gonna to happen but no way is that going to happen you know like what why take a stand against a weather event does it does he have a sort of slightly smug tone to it because the way you delivered it there ellis it's just like he's slightly well also there's two things he was scientifically correct because it wasn't a hurricane but it was bad

enough to you know people died and things were destroyed. It ripped up a tree in my garden. That's my memory of it. A tree got torn out of its roots. Yeah. You know, fair side tree. Yes, that's right. David and Jan next door, they lost their fence.

I mean, it was bad, right? I read it, wasn't there like a third of trees? It was an incredible amount of trees that were felled in this storm. Well, we'll talk about this in a second, because Kew Gardens obviously famously suffered very badly. But the thing that went viral quite recently that I hadn't seen before, because I don't know if I remember the Michael Fish bulletin, but I'd seen it loads of times since,

was Ian McCaskill, who I think might have given Michael Fish the forecast, got absolutely destroyed by Michael Burke. And obviously, I work on the BBC. And to defend the BBC for a moment, in comparison with other broadcasters, it is amazingly good at giving itself a kicking, nice mister. So Michael Burke and Eamon Caskill would have known each other really well. Yep. And it's on the 6 o'clock news, I think, or the 1 o'clock news. So Michael Burke and Ian McCaskill would have known each other really well Yep And it's on the 6 o'clock news I think Or the 1 o'clock news

Michael Burke turns to Ian McCaskill and he goes Hello Ian You boys are the Met Office Fat lot of good you were at the weekend Ian McCaskill goes Yeah Sorry, sorry, sorry Michael He's up Amazon

That's remarkable forecasts can be wrong sometimes and in this case smart Dalek journalists labelled the event Hurricane Ethelred after the Anglo-Saxon

King Ethelred the Unready and with a view to blaming forecasters for the mistake as I said Michael Fish was scientifically correct

as it wasn't a hurricane but it was a very bad storm now Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister at the time who was in Vancouver told a television news bulletin that when one telephoned, it was one of the first things one had said. She continued, hurricanes, as you know, are notorious for taking paths that have not been forecast. And as news came in, it was worse and worse. I can only think

that it would have been even worse had it come mid-afternoon. Now, in those days, and this is what people forget, the very best computers available for predicting the weather had a processing power far below the average smartphone. Which meant a far greater difficulty identifying unusual events. The scale of difference is mind-blowing. It's at least five times.

So the smartphone is five times more powerful than the Met Office's supercomputers of the late 1980s. That is so crazy. My dad, I remember him talking about, there was at the DVLA in Swansea, they had this huge computer

and this is in the pre-microchip era and it basically just kept people's addresses. It was the size of a leisure centre. It was absolutely massive. Have you ever seen the picture of the computer that helped NASA steer the Apollo mission to the moon? It takes up a room.

It's like enormous. Yeah, and it's all valves, isn't it, rather than microchips. The valves are huge. Those are all computers. So, you know, you've got to hand it to Michael Fish and Ian McCaskill in the Met Office. They were working with the technology, the best technology they had.

Now, I'm with Michael Burke. Yes. Idiots who are responsible for this. But it's like something from the day to day. You know, he basically goes, you've lost the weather! And the cast goes just to sit there and eat shit. Do you remember the London 2012 opening ceremony?

They played that. There was a selection of clips of really British pop culture references in a row. And they picked out michael fish delivering that we've had a letter like that was broadcast did they to hundreds of millions yeah if you're michael fish watching that thinking at last i can relax in this huge cultural moment in my country and there's the biggest mistake i've ever made you know on the big screen hundreds of millions global audience it's so british now in reaction to the controversy, the term the Michael Fish effect has been coined,

whereby British weather forecasts are now inclined to predict a worst-case scenario in order to avoid being caught out. The term Michael Fish moment is applied to public forecasts on any topic which turn out to be embarrassingly wrong. It just reminded me of something in terms of crushing for your self-esteem. I went on a school trip when I was 15 to the lake district we went walking and i got uh blown into a bush by a crosswind and that is still to this day one of the most embarrassing i disappeared into the bush because of a crosswind like school shoes sticking out and obviously the rest of that

trip was just a write-off because you're the guy who's got blown into a bush. You've got the sort of weight of paper. Yeah. That's mortifying. That's bad. Now then. Anyway. Hurricane force winds measuring 115 to 120 miles an hour

whip through southern England, northern France, and the Channel Islands, causing extensive material and environmental damage. Railways and roads were shut. The stock market was plunged into chaos. And Kew Gardens told the press the attraction will never be the same in our lifetime. Wow. The costs measured at least one billion in Britain alone,

the equivalent of 2.8 billion today. Tens of millions of trees were felled and at least 22 people lost their lives. And that all had to come out of Michael Fish's pocket as well, didn't it? He had to. That's on you, Fish as well, didn't it? He had to. That's on you, Fish. So there were deaths reported in Britain and France. It was the worst storm. Now this blew my mind. This is obviously Daryl Eworthy,

our historian who does our research. I couldn't believe this. It was the worst storm in Britain since 1703 when upwards of 8,000 people were killed by a cyclone. What? What? Which rampaged through central and southern England on the 26th of November. Wow. Upper estimates of deaths range as high as 30,000 even.

When was that? A cyclone, 1703. Thousands of homes were destroyed in the earlier devastation. In 1703, there was extensive flooding. Thousands of ships were blown off course or lost at sea. And several of the great cathedrals or abbeys were damaged, including Llandaff, Wells and Westminster Abbey. As Daniel Defoe was to write in his book The Storm, published in 1704, no pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it, unless by one in the extremity of it.

Wow. It's just mind-boggling. A cyclone in England. Yeah, yeah. It is difficult to be precise about what was the cause of the Sentinel-3 storm, given the relative novelty of weather reporting and the absence of meteorological science of that type. But the 1987 storm was caused by a sting jet,

a phenomenon which had not been identified then, but which now forms part of the vocabulary of meteorologists all over the world. The jet sting, says the Met Office, is a small area of very intense wind, often 100 miles an hour or more, that can sometimes form in powerful weather systems across in the UK.

The jet sting is narrow, often 30 miles across, and only lasts three to four hours. In the aftermath, government ministers described what had happened in the storm as the worst, most widespread night of disaster since the Second World War. Wow. A police spokesman from Kent agreed it looked like World War III out there.

And the thing is, if you're working for the police and there's a riot, unless it's on an enormous scale like 2011, you can sort that with more police officers. But if a weather event like that, there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. So you're just trying to ensure that, you know, you're trying to keep people safe, but you can't, you've just got to wait for it to go.

Now, unless the UK was unaffected, however, and at PMQs the following week, Mrs Thatcher endeavoured to resist calls for government support to be given to those communities affected. Classic. As she said... Yeah.

It really is, isn't it? That is remarkable. What she said there, what's the reasoning? She said, it seems reasonable to me to expect local authorities to make contingency plans for unexpected events and reasonable that they should bear the cost to meet those contingencies. Classic. Oh, good.

Right, yeah. Now, the havoc caused in southern England had all been compounded by weeks of bad weather which softened the ground and made it possible for many more trees

to be ripped up than might otherwise have happened in a drier period oh that's really interesting because the ground was wet it had less hold

on the things that were growing that's fascinating as I said the ground had softened because of weeks of bad weather which made it possible for more trees to be ripped up than might otherwise have happened in the drier period we probably now recognize this as part of the long sting of climate change

there was another contemporary anxiety too but the fate of those imprisoned on the earl william now i don't remember this this was a repurposed car ferry being used by the government to house refugees from across the channels the ship was moved just moored just off Harwich in Essex. In all, 120 people were on board, half of them Tamils from Sri Lanka. And so when the storm hit and the boat smashed free of its moorings, there were fears that it might sink or that lives might be lost.

It took 14 hours before those on board, the refugees and crew, were rescued by the authorities. Ten days earlier, a few refugees had escaped by diving overboard into the freezing waters of the North Sea and swimming to shore. So from Harwich, they eventually made it to London

where they were welcomed by the city's existing Tamil community. You know, no wonder six-year-old me remembers it, because it was just it was this huge event, and especially Kew Gardens. I remember footage of Kew Gardens on the news, all those trees that had been blown down, and you just thought, bloody hell.

I tell you why I also had a fear from that time out. And you might be, do you remember a film called Twister? Do you remember that? Yes. Yeah, it came out a few years later. That really, I got genuinely panicked about the idea of tornadoes for a while. It really did scare me. The concept of it did really, because of that film.

Well, my son watched a cartoon this morning and there was a tornado. And he said, what's that spinning thing? I said, it's a tornado. And he said, what's that spinning thing? I said, it's a tornado. And he said, do we get them? And I said, no, no, don't worry, buddy. We never have them. And I'm not going to tell him about the one that happened in 1703. He doesn't need to hear that.

And the fact that it could technically come back at any point. Yeah, yeah. And I know it was a cyclone, but, you know, it's all bad, so I'll just keep it from it. I'll just keep shtum about that little detail. I have a feeling if I'm ever caught

in something like that, all it'll do, it won't kill me, but it'll do something really embarrassing like just rip my trousers off. And throw you in a bush. And I'll be the only person

wearing no trousers on Oxford Street. Very localized tornado. Yeah, yeah. A localized tornado that's blown something up your bum in front of all of your peers.

A big trumpet. And the wind going in the trumpet is playing a tune. But a bad tune. How dare you say a bad tune? I would read the National Anthem. The localised tornado has also blown all of your friends out of nearby offices so everyone gets to see and it's blown on

people's smartphones which means everyone's taken a video of it and all of my exes have been blown into a line somehow in front of me anyway

and it's for that reason I hate it yes alright that's the end of part one. Weather, do join us tomorrow for part two. But if you want to become an Oh What A Time full-timer, you can get both parts now,

and you will get our new exclusive offering, which is two bonus episodes per month, plus all the old part fours will be there for you as well. If you want to sign up, go to ohwhatatime.com. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow for part two of weather. Bye. Thank you.