"Norman" wrote in message
...
Martin Brown wrote:

On 14/09/2011 10:49, Ken Cook wrote:
The local man killed by a falling tree in Monday's gale was well known
to me. It certainly brings home another side of severe weather when
something like this happens. Was the Met Office right to issue gale
warnings? Ask ordinary folk here and you will be told in no uncertain
terms. They don't know what the official terms of a gale are and aren't
particularly interested, but they do know that a gale warning means
damage, strong winds and danger.

I agree. It is more important than ever now that there are lots of
semi-dead
horse chestnut trees about with brittle branches. One of my neighbours
had a
30' tree snap in two on Monday - narrowly missing their house. The mature
oaks I can see from home have survived unscathed despite being in a very
exposed position and swaying like crazy on the day (whole tree that is
not
just the branches).


As I posted in another thread, my wife had a problem travelling from
Macclesfield to London by train on Monday as the line was closed for a
while
due to a fallen tree. It doesn't bear thinking about what might happen if
one
of the high speed Virgin trains ran into a fallen tree. There's not much
the
train companies can do when they receive a gale warning, other than run
the
trains much more slowly than usual, which they don't. When my wife
eventually
got a train on Monday it ran at the normal speed. I suppose the answer
would be
to cut down all the trees bordering the railway lines but I can't see that
ever
happening. Makes you think, though.

They used to be apparently, in the days of steam to stop sparks causing
fires.
When steam ended, the trees were allowed to grow back. By the early 90s
they had grown back to such an extent that we had the first major 'leaves
on the line' problems.
--
Col

Bolton, Lancashire
160m asl