It's been a very rough day in Skegness. Severe winds gusting to 70 mph (112 kmph) have literally battered the coastline causing a lot of damage, though we seemed to get away with the worst of it. Some towns and villages around here had to be evacuated. Most notably was the town of Boston where 18,000 people were told to leave their homes.
Obviously I was concerned about my FM antenna mast coming down but I am thankful to report that it didn't. The weight of this structure is about 75 kilos with the thick aluminium pole and the heavy duty rotator. Fingers crossed this stays up but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't. Some large trees were snapped just around the corner from here though.
What was of more concern today was the threat to life as weather forecasters predicted a large tidal surge of similar proportions to the storm which flooded Skegness in 1953. Severe "Red Alert" weather warnings and flood alerts existed across the east coast from Yorkshire down to Essex and they're not over yet.
The winds abated by early evening but the tidal surge was expected to cause flooding here around 6:45 to 7:30 pm. Curiosity got the better of me and I took my camera out to the sea front to see what was happening. The police had closed lots of roads along the sea front so it was difficult to get a clear picture of what was happening, but having seen local photos on Facebook depicting minor flooding I realised that the sea defenses had been breached.
The damage turned out to be 'relatively' minor here, though pathways have been torn up and there is flood damage to a few sea front properties. The real damage was down the coast in Boston, some 20 miles from here. BBC Radio Lincolnshire was reporting that much of the town centre was under two feet (more than half a metre) of water.
We're not out of the woods yet as more tidal surges are expected over the next 24 hours but hopefully the worst has passed.
I'll finish this off with a little grumble. This evening I learnt that Nelson Mandela had passed away. Obviously this is very sad news. I must point out that I do not wish to be disrespectful towards Nelson Mandela and all those concerned with his passing, but it really pisses me off big time how all the television news channels, including the BBC and ITV regional networks, suddenly stopped their coverage of the local flooding situation and gave us something which is not important to us locally, especially at a time when we need as much local information as possible about something which is far more important to us and potentially life-threatening.
Plus it has been the perfect day for this evil government of ours to bury all their bad news which we should be hearing about.
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