2023 – CHW

Rhododendron ‘Winter Intruder’ now at its best a good month later than most years.

2022 – CHW

So what did we all make of Storm Eunice yesterday? In the post pandemic era we shut down everything of course. One hundred and eighty Cornish schools shut, no refuse collection, no trains of any sort, no planes out of Newquay. The county council declared a state of emergency from their command bunker. So what actually happened?

The storm hit at 7am and I drove to Burncoose for a lengthy three and a half hour management meeting without seeing any trees down and with as little traffic as in April 2020 at the start of the pandemic. By 12.00 the storm had gone through and was just a windy day with sun and squalls of rain.

Radio Cornwall disgusted no one on the seafront was flooded on the hightide at 7am and hoped for better this evening. ‘Stay at home’ (in all circumstances) and ‘stay safe’; the usual covid cries repeated in another context. The highways authority said to Radio Cornwall that even van drivers should not go to work and most buses did not run. Total shutdown and totally unnecessary. A gross overreaction.

Nothing like as bad as the hurricane on 25/26th January 1990 and the weather charts showed that it was never going to be. ‘Keep safe’ and ‘do nothing’ a typical product of the current national work averse state of play. Frightening to older people but not that much worse than your typical Cornish westerly gale.

Three or four trees down at Burncoose and a few at Caerhays as you will see below and tomorrow. No electricity at Caerhays for about eight hours which was boring. About 10 to 14 days’ work to put back slates blown off quite a few estate roofs for the maintenance team but, as far as I know yet, not one insurance claim to raise. You might argue that we were just lucky but, those who remember January 1990, and any seafarer (which I am definitely not), would tell you that this was a very bad storm but hardly a national emergency. In a real hurricane the wind roars so loudly you cannot hear yourself speak.

Radio Cornwall reported five or six roads closed in the county due to fallen trees and two due to roof debris at 4pm. If the storm had come overnight I doubt many would have noticed. We had very similar storms in 2012 and 2018 with power cuts and trees down but not a countrywide lockdown thrown in.

The Met Office issued an amber warning for Wales and the south of England on Thursday. By Friday morning this had become a ‘very rare’ red warning. My guess is that ‘reds’ will now become the norm in a world where risk and personal choice are unknown. I blame the insidious health and safety culture which arrived from America (and then got reinforced by the EU) whereby every accident has to be blamed on someone and usually someone who can pay. In 50 years’ time we will need a risk assessment to get out of bed. War in Ukraine might, I suppose, finally break this mould of thought.

At the nursery today I enjoyed photographing in the gale:

Vinca difformis ‘Jenny Pym’