Wild weather!

I've always been interested in how a sudden and highly localized weather system can develop. These are reported from all over the globe. In a very specific, concentrated locality, the weather can turn extreme, even life-threatening, while only a couple of miles off in any direction, things are calm and peaceful. It's unusual, but happens often enough to keep things interesting.

The latest example hit a village in England last night.

Ottery St Mary, in Devon, was plunged into chaos by the storm in the early hours yesterday.

First, the area was battered by an astonishing 12in of hail in just two hours. This blocked drains, which led to widespread flooding as the rain began to fall.




More than 100 people had to be evacuated from their homes and 25 were airlifted to safety or rescued by firefighters.

After a day of heavy rain on Wednesday more than three inches of rain and hail fell between 6pm and 8am yesterday morning.

The Met Office said the 'hugely localised' weather system was less than 4 miles across and seemed ' to be centred on Ottery St Mary'.

The most severe weather hit just after midnight on Thursday but by 5am the entire town was cut off and coastguards scrambled helicopters to airlift residents.

Emergency services were inundated with calls from terrified home owners who watched helplessly as flood water rose to 5ft high in some places, and there were fears that hundreds of animals may have been killed in the floods.

Residents in Ottery St Mary said the town was unrecognisable after the hail storm..

Sarah Galliford said: 'I was woken up by the sound of hailstones thundering down on the roof. I thought it was the end of the world. I looked outside at about 1am and there was a river of ice coming down the street. It was a total freak of nature. It wasn't even on the weather forecast. They said there would be rain but nothing like this. It was absolutely crazy.'

Clara Pedmore added: 'There is 2ft 6ins of water on the road. I can't get out of the house.One farm nearby has lost about 500 sheep which were out in fields which are now completely underwater.'




Tony Fabry, who runs the town's post office, said: 'At one point I was watching beer barrels, sandwich boards and even a children's slide floating down the road.

'It was absolutely horrendous. It was a nightmare and it happened so quickly. The drains became blocked with hail and so when the snow melted it was just a deluge.'

Susanne Reed from Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service said: 'It has been absolute chaos. It started just after midnight when we were out rescuing people stuck in their cars in flood water. It got worse and worse and one of our own crews got stuck in a 6ft hail drift. We have been rescuing people constantly.'

The Environment Agency said an 'unforeseeable and freakish' combination of factors had led to the extreme conditions in Ottery St Mary.

A spokesman for Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service added: 'Around 1ft of hail fell in just two hours between 1am and 3am. Cars in the town were left tightly packed in ice and the drains were blocked meaning the water had nowhere to go.




The surrounding villages of Awliscombe, Rockbeare and Newton were also affected.

Weird stuff! It's no fun to be caught in such a freakish outbreak of weather. It happened to me once while climbing in the Cederberg ('Cedar Mountains') in South Africa. Fortunately, we were near a cave, and took shelter there for a full two days while the storm and its aftermath washed over the mountains. We were safe, but it was still a scary experience - as was the climb down afterwards, over steep paths made soggy and slippery by the mess.

(The Cederberg area isn't only famous for its mountains - it's also the only place in the world where rooibos ['red bush'] tea is grown. I still chuckle at a scandal that blew up in the 1970's. Local farmers had for years laid out rooibos tea to dry in the sun. Birds flying overhead had, inevitably, provided a 'downpour' of a different kind, and polluted the drying tea with their droppings. A chemist analyzed a packet of rooibos tea that he'd bought, and found fecal contamination, leading to an outcry among consumers. An enterprising tea farmer announced that henceforth, he was going to irradiate his tea with nuclear isotopes to kill all germs, thus rendering it completely pure and safe for consumption. The response from one South African columnist was something like, "Well, it may be irradiated birds**t, but it's still birds**t - and I don't drink birds**t!" Needless to say, more hygienic methods of drying the tea were swiftly developed.)

Peter