UK Storm coverage

Yes. Tv-am's first hour (06:00hrs to 07:00hrs) was from Thames's continuity studio at Euston, there's a You Tube clip somewhere, but I can't find it.

For me, watching Hannington, the only channel that morning being transmitted was BBC 1, and that was RBS Crystal Palace. Rowridge's power had been knocked out, and wasn't restored until about 21:00hrs that evening.
That meant that TVS's Coast to Coast , which was a region-wide (Dorset to Kent) programme, wasn't seen at all
in the west of the region, Hannington and Midhurst were just dead for ITV and 4, as there was no feed for them from Rowridge.

We had Newsroom South East that evening on BBC 1, with a five minute slot within the programme from Southampton, and Bruce Parker. It was explained as 'owing to a power failure in Southampton', which was nonsense of course, because Bruce was sat in a perfectly functioning Southampton studio !

Happy days, was it really just 26 years ago !

Quite possibly, but if I were the Beeb, I wouldn't waste resources for the sake of Breakfast TV News, I'd
be ensuring the local radio stations had resilience, they are infinitely more useful and relevant than TV news in such situations.

Better, to deploy any equipment required later in the day, for evening TV

Stop Press. Oh good, I see the Beeb have some poor soul stationed in Cardiff Bay, just in case we have no idea what a storm hitting the coast is like

This still makes no sense.

A relevant (I assume) schedule change on BBC Three early this morning...

00:10 - 00:30 American Dad! (Series 8, Hurricane!) isn't on and has been replaced by a different episode:-
00:10 - 00:30 American Dad! (Series 8, The Scarlett Getter)

That seems somewhat oversensitive.

A lot of people think that Michael Fish was the one who incorrectly forecast the 1987 Great Storm. It's only partly true. He did say that there was "no hurricane on the way" but he wasn't actually referring to the area of low pressure which did all the damage. The person he referred to was the mother of one of the BBC staff members who was due to go off on holiday abroad and had heard that there was a hurricane at her intended destination.

What Michael Fish DID say was to batten down the hatches as there was a possibility of strong winds making their way across the UK later that day and possibly overnight, which is always left out of the reruns of that clip. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't on duty that evening, just hours before the storm struck - Bill Giles was the duty forecaster that night.

Ironically, one of the trees in Michael Fish's garden blew down during the latest storm...!

The other important thing to consider is that there never was a hurricane - there were hurricane-force winds, but not a hurricane. The technology at the time wasn't available to accurately predict the Great Storm in any case.

The point was not that he didn't say there was going to be a hurricane, but that he specifically went out of his way to say that there wasn't. And Fish suggesting long after the event it was about Florida is just rubbish, he was on British television forecasting the weather for Britain and 99.999% of the audience would have taken it as such. The other 0.001% being one M Fish.

Talking of people claiming that they were the person who phoned the BBC, Town 102 broadcast this amazing interview last year:

http://audioboo.fm/boos/1007344-greatstorm-25-years-on-brian-nick-pandolfi

That sounds like one of Jon Culshaw's early wind up calls he used to make to local radio stations on R4's,
Dead Ringers.

That was genuinely on Town 102 last year (there was a clip circulating last year that had much more continuity around it), but there have since been many more interviews with this man and they have got more and more bizarre. So much so, I assume that it is a comedy character and the team behind Nic Pandolfi's breakfast show are in on the joke. It can't possibly be genuine, especially given some of the later ones. There's a whole page dedicated to Brian here: http://www.nicholaspandolfi.co.uk/brian-from-melton/

Furthermore, a tropical climate (with sea temps of 26C or more) is needed for a hurricane-- the UK certainly doesn't have one of those!