Severe Storm Predicted Sunday 27th / Monday 28th October 2013

[whole diary]

[LiskeardRich]

The Met Office have been congratulating themselves on their forecast being 'on the money', and what transpired was pretty much what was predicted around noon yesterday. This didn't stop an interviewer goading them this morning that they had overdone it, when it was elements in the media that built it up, including using an invented Biblical name for it. Not much more than a routine winter storm really, more damage because it went over populated areas, and trees are still in leaf.

Pirate FM (local radio) were discussing the "over hyping" on their breakfast show that some medias were reporting. The 2 breakfast presenters came to the conclusion it was better for the Met Office to "over hype" than under advise. After a listener call in feature on their program they concluded that people were better prepared and safer by the over hyping, than potentially endangered by insufficient information

[eightf48544]

Although this was a slow service I don't remember seeing many fast services pass us on the fast lines in either directions and I got to PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) a bit later than normal but having had a seat all the way.

Main and Relief Lines Sir you are on the Great Western!

[JayMac]

Main and Relief Lines Sir you are on the Great Western!

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Storm cancellations: Were train companies too cautious?

Train services were completely cancelled across large parts of England on Monday, leaving thousands of people seeking alternative transport. But with companies axing services before the storm had even arrived, were they right to be so cautious?

Hours before the St Jude storm began whipping across the coast, senior figures at South West Trains had made a decision - they were going to cancel nearly all services for the following morning. As one of the largest train operators - running a train every minute into London Waterloo at peak times - the company had learnt to put its faith in weather forecasts.

This was a pattern largely imitated across most of the country, with First Capital Connect, Greater Anglia, Southeastern and Southern, also cancelling entire services.

Network Rail defended the decision, saying 100 fallen trees had been found on railway lines.

But were rail operators gambling that the weather would be as bad as predicted? And what would have happened had the storm been a damp squib?

Emma Knight, from South West Trains, said that blanket cancellation was "not a decision that we ever take lightly. If we hadn't had the weather as predicted we could have tried to reinstate the trains as best we could," she said. "But if we had gone ahead with normal services, people would have been stuck on trains, and we would have trains and crews stranded all over the place. We find the best approach is to be realistic. This way passengers know where they stand."

And she said that blanket cancellations had become more common recently.

"In my experience, with some of the extreme weather we've had in the past few years - with really heavy snows and floods - it has become more and more something that has to be done," she added.


Trains were nowhere to be seen in many areas of east and southern England

However, some commuters found the scale of the cancellations to be less than helpful.

George Thomson, who was stranded at Gatwick, tweeted: "Opposite of the British Bulldog spirit, flights on, buses on, but trains all cancelled on Southern Railways lines = over cautious!"

And Stewart Jackson, MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Peterborough, tweeted: "How come a gust of wind disables whole east of England rail infrastructure with economic consequences too?"

The storm was forecast to be the worst to hit the country in years with winds gusting over 80mph (129km/h). A gust of 99mph (159km/h) was recorded at Needles Old Battery, Isle of Wight, at 06:00 GMT.

A 17-year-old girl and a man in his 50s were killed by falling trees, while many others were injured on roads and pavements in towns and cities hit by strong gusts.

But there have been no reports of injuries at railway stations or on trains, even though one passenger service struck a tree in Devon.

Roger Perkins, from First Capital Connect, said passenger safety was paramount. The decision on what to do in the event of severe weather is taken jointly as an industry with Network Rail.

"There are various contingency timetables that can be put into effect," he said.

"All the train companies and Network Rail worked over the weekend to see how we could best respond as an industry.

"But there comes a point at which a decision has to be made."

Network Rail said several hundred staff had been working to monitor conditions and react to any damage caused by the storm.

Robin Gisby, Network Rail's managing director of network operations, said: "While conditions were as forecast during the early part of the morning, the damage caused by the storm has been more severe than expected."

Couple of observations from me:

I've included one of the pictures that illustrate the article. Those are the approaches to Glasgow Central. 

The article mentions a passenger train striking a tree in Devon. This was an empty stock movement. No passengers were aboard as is clear from following the embedded link to another BBC News item.

[trainbuff]

Pirate fm reporting long delays on the trains as a train has hit a fallen tree near Ivybridge. 

This was an empty CrossCountry Voyager en route from Laira depot to Paignton to form the 0702 to Manchester Piccadilly. That service is now starting at Birmingham New Street.

In fact that is slightly incorrect. This empty stock movement leaves Laira and goes into Plymouth Station. There a Guard and the catering stores are put on the train. The Guard is required to operate the Barriers at Goodrington South crossing as the train is required to go into the sidings for route refresh purposes. The caterer joins the service normally at 07.19 when the 07.02 gets to Newton Abbot.

[ChrisB]

Mark Hopwood on Twitter....

Mark Hopwood (@hopwood_mark)

28/10/2013 10:41
FGW^▸ (First Great Western) hasn't run all trains but done our best with NR^» (Network Rail - home page). Kept most lines open. Received lots tweets from customers who appreciate it #meansalot

Moderator note: Edited to fix quote and add link to tweet. bignosemac

[Electric train]

Looking at the performance data at work today the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) faired better than many lines,

[grahame]

Hopeless trying to get onto NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s Journeychecker this morning and finally got onto FGW^▸ (First Great Western) at about the 7th attempt - there seems little point referring people to websites for information/before setting out which don't have the capacity to cope when they are really needed - very frustrating.

Even the coffee shop saw a spike in traffic ... the first two diagrams attached are the daily and hourly visits for the last month, and they show significantly higher traffic over the 48 hours (24 before and 24 after) the storm.  We too take network feeds for our map, and it times that was missing information, I'm afraid.  Added out of interest is the diagram from another of our sites, showing the effect of a really serious viral interest on normal figures.

[grahame]

Out of our area, but still not all back:

http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/10769083._/?

The Abbey Flyer train service will remain suspended today due to damage caused in yesterday^s storm.

London Midland said repair works were still ongoing after a tree was blown over onto the line between Watford Junction and St Albans Abbey.

A replacement bus service will run today and the train operator said it hopes the service will resume tomorrow.

Bad news for Watford North to Elstree commuters 

[ChrisB]

NRE^‡(resolve) email just received....

St Jude Storm - Impact on our customer service


Many more people than ever before used our services on Monday morning and reported a satisfactory experience, but there were problems encountered by some customers. If you were one of those customers who had difficulty in accessing our information on Monday morning, I am very sorry for the additional stress and inconvenience that we caused you. I've set out below a brief account of how we approached preparations for the storm and how events unfolded.

Saturday / Sunday

Storm St Jude was well forecast with the Met Office predicting weather that would have an impact on transport and other infrastructure. Some Train Operators took the decision over the weekend not to run trains early on Monday due to the likelihood of there being debris blown on to the tracks and the consequent potential safety impact. This information was posted onto our website homepage on Saturday evening.

On Sunday evening the amended timetable for Monday was made available in our journey planner.

Over the course of the weekend we had a planned upgrade of the journey planning systems which affected our ability to send alerts. This was communicated to customers in advance via their alerting preferences and by email. The upgrade went ahead as planned: one reason for the upgrade was that it allows us to add more capacity as required so that we could meet the needs of more customers.

Our contact centre team drafted in extra staff to work overtime on Monday to try to the cope with the anticipated increase in the number of customers calling. Our information management team was also bolstered with extra people.

The eye of the storm
 
We saw a marked increase in traffic across all of our channels (website / mobile / app / contact centre) from Sunday evening which continued through the early hours of Monday morning. Despite many more people than ever before using our services on Monday morning and reporting a satisfactory experience, there were problems encountered by some customers.

The problems included some customers being presented with a blank page rather than their journey plan, live departure board or other information - including in some cases our home page. This also had an impact on some customers using our mobile website, our apps and TrainTracker. This was identified by our support team who immediately began to investigate the cause of the issue and rectify it, whilst adding extra servers to cope with the increased demand. This took some time to complete, but the upgrade at the weekend meant that it was possible without reducing service to the majority of customers.

On our telephone lines, although our contact centre had additional staff working overtime and all desks were fully staffed, some customers had to wait quite a while for their call to be answered. Our advisors answered 47% more calls than a normal weekday and in addition our recorded message system answered almost 12,000 calls.

What worked well

Between 6am and 7am we had approximately 40,000 people on the website at any one time - about ten times what we see on a normal weekday morning. In the hour from 06:00 to 07:00 we answered 50% more requests for train times & ticket prices than in our previous busiest hour, which was when there was heavy snow on 18th January this year. The majority of customers were still able to use the website satisfactorily whilst the fixes were put in place.

Although journey planning in the apps was affected by the overall journey planning problems outlined above, live departure boards and other functions worked well. The Social Media team worked at full capacity delivering over 2000 messages to our Twitter accounts - by the end of Monday we had an extra 11,000 followers on our @nationalrailenq account. On the Facebook page we compiled an album of the pictures of the issues being found by Network Rail and the Train Operators.
 
Lessons Learned

We are working with our suppliers to investigate what went wrong and why, so that we are better prepared for the next major disruption.

Kind regards

Chris Scoggins
Chief Executive, National Rail Enquiries

[TonyK]

You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. I am no fan of over-zealous health and safety governance, but here, surely, this was risk assessment on a grand scale.

The British railway network relies on a clear run, with no unexpected trees, landslips, OLE^▸ (Overhead Line Equipment, more often "OHLE") failures, and a lot more besides. As we know, it is susceptible to interference from the elements. In this case, the Met Office, according to the Trolleygraph forecast the path, size, and ferocity of this storm several days before it formed. Network Rail presumably buys this information, and sets about applying it to the network in conjunction with the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company). They clearly thought that "business as usual" posed an unacceptably high risk to passengers, assets, and smooth running when the wind has passed. Had the forecast said "A little blustery for the time of year", then some of the grumblings could be understood. But no-one with sense would ignore the kind of warnings issued, and I think the actions of those concerned were correct in the circumstances.

Only one incident (the tree in Cornwall) arose, and that without injury, but the commuting masses see this as evidence of over-caution. It could be that there was only one incident because proportionate caution was exercised. I would rather see 10,000 inconvenienced passengers than a single damaged one, and had a train full of passengers hit a fallen tree at speed, the same voices would have been raised in condemnation of reckless disregard for safety.

[trainer]

I agree, FTN.  The belief in absolute guarantees, so beloved of journalists trying to trick politicians, business leaders and others into statements they can beat them with later, is endemic in our society.  Weather forecasting is a 'probability' exercise and the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) and NR^» (Network Rail - home page) had to react to a high probability.  They acted on the safe side, which means because no-one was hurt, only inconvenienced, it is open to those without responsibility to use hindsight to cry 'over-cautious'.

[ChrisB]

And we weren't the only country to suspend services.....which sort of bears NR^» (Network Rail - home page) out.

Agree with comments above. The public are an a*se sometimes, geed on by the press

[bobm]

I agree, FTN.  The belief in absolute guarantees, so beloved of journalists trying to trick politicians, business leaders and others into statements they can beat them with later, is endemic in our society.  Weather forecasting is a 'probability' exercise and the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) and NR^» (Network Rail - home page) had to react to a high probability.  They acted on the safe side, which means because no-one was hurt, only inconvenienced, it is open to those without responsibility to use hindsight to cry 'over-cautious'.

I am in agreement too.

At the weekend I planned to go to the West Country and return on Monday.  I took the view that care was being taken to run a practical service given the forecasted conditions.  I set out knowing that delays were possible but risks would not be run and it would be safer and more comfortable than by road.

In the end I arrived at my destination 12 minutes late on Sunday and my train home on Monday was on time.  That was a bonus - I had factored in the possibility of being delayed but I wasn't.  That doesn't leave me thinking "Well they made a fuss about nothing".  I think FGW^▸ (First Great Western) got it spot on.  They did not cancel everything before 9am on Monday after taking into effect the time the storm was due to cross their area.  They assessed where problems were likely to be and made revisions accordingly.  Also, once it became clear things were not as bad as feared, they quickly got cancelled services re-instated.

[didcotdean]

The contrast is with Denmark, where they had to suspend services in operation for a period in the evening, leaving passengers stranded on trains between stations. They are being accused of under-reacting to the warnings.

[TonyK]

Ah, wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, which set the bar for me against which I measure how cold I feel. And I'm from Lancashire. I wasn't that impressed with the beer either, truth to tell.

You are right with probabilities, trainer. My usual source of weather information comes from the Met Office General Aviation service, and the American NWS IWS (National Weather Service Internet Weather Service, collated from Met Offices the world over) simply because they are updated so regularly. If you know the ICAO code of a nearby airport (Bristol is EGGD and Heathrow EGLL), and if you can decode the information, you can see from METARS (Meteorological Aviation Reports) what the current weather is, and from TAFs (Terminal Area Forecasts) what information your airline pilot has about what is expected in the next few hours.

In the case of TAFs, there is a probability figure quoted. Most airlines tell their pilots to ignore anything of 30% or under in planning a flight. In the case of the Fairly Great Storm of 2013, I was much impressed by the Met Office's output, and wonder if this is a sign of new equipment giving greater forecasting powers. Much of Bristol Airport's stuff carried a 60% probability, and would have been ignored only by a fool.

BTW^▸ (by the way), if you looked at the TAF for Bristol:
TAF EGGD 031658Z 0318/0418 18010KT 9999 SCT030
     BECMG 0318/0321 08017G27KT 6000 -RA BKN010
     PROB40
     TEMPO 0318/0404 3000 +RA BKN002
     BECMG 0321/0324 02017G27KT
     BECMG 0403/0406 32009KT 9999 NSW SCT025
       
you will see that tomorrow looks nice, as the wind backs and loses strength substantially by 3am. We go from heavy rain with winds gusting to 27 knots and clouds at 200 feet to a relatively benign 9 knot north westerly, and no significant weather. Looks like I might cycle too work after all.