I can only assume that the next one's going to be "The Even Greaterer Storm, No Really"

It's Blog Action Day today, which should mean that I post about environmental issues and then donate today's blog earnings to an environmental charity. The second part of that's going to be tricky, as my earnings on this blog are exactly equal to the costs - nil, in other words.

Luckily, though, I was going to post on something environmentally-related anyway, as yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the Great Storm of 1987. Because Britain has such a strange climate (unpleasant on average, but very rarely so dangerous as to be noticeable), the Great Storm is still remembered as the most interesting thing that the weather's done around here for about half a century. It certainly had a major impact on my two-year-old self; my earliest memory is of being taken down towards the village in a pushchair, only to see an enormous tree blocking the path. This, of course, means that my episodic memory is 20 years old today. How's that for a geeky psychological anniversary?

Even if we as a country do make a big thing of it (the US's eastern seaboard gets hit with storms at least the size of the Great Storm most years), the effect that the storm had was pretty impressive. 15 million trees are said to have been knocked down, the insurance payout came to £2 billion, and 23 people were killed. Less destructive but still dramatic effects include building damage - some people remember seeing tiles being lifted from roofs and spinning off into the street. For a country as densely populated as the UK, it's no surprise that so many people were affected; nor is it surprising, in a country so deeply obsessed with the weather, that we're still talking about it 20 years on.

At this point, I think it's probably better if I shut up and let the dulcet tones of the BBC News take over. This clip cuts off fairly abruptly before the end of the report, but we do get the opportunity to see the absolutely surreal sight of a gigantic ferry sitting awkwardly on the beach. Let's hope it's a nice long time before this kind of thing happens again.

Copyright owned by the BBC, so this isn't covered by my CC licence.