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The Technical Explanation

Although our articles concentrate on personal memories of the flood, we felt that a brief technical explanation was called for in order to place he whole thing in context. The detailed story is available at the Met Office .....

Apparently, the disaster was the result of a storm surge during Saturday 31 January and Sunday, 1 February 1953. Such surges of water are caused by two things - wind action on the surface of the sea and the effect of low atmospheric pressure on water levels. In the latter case, the sea rises as pressure drops. The deeper a cyclone becomes, the higher the sea level rises.

Back in January '53, the storm surge was one of the worst on record and it affected the whole of the east coast.... starting in Scotland and working its way southward. It was not, therefore, a purely Whitstable phenomenon and many areas suffered flooding and storm damage both in the UK and on the continent.

Bad luck played a huge part in the tragedy in that the surge hit Whitstable at the time of a very high tide. However, the impact was maximised by the lack of warning. 

With less sophisticated scientific prediction techniques available, it was far more difficult to forecast and warn of a storm surge in advance. When the tragedy started to unfold down the east coast, another problem arose. The storm actually damaged lines of communication that might have been used to warn the population further south.

The fundamental mix of a high tide, wind, low pressure and a resulting storm surge is just as possible in the future as it was in the past. Another point to consider is the fact that the Kent coast is sinking at a rate of approximately 1 ft per century as pointed out by dear Harry Mountford - my A-level geography teacher at Simon Langton back in the 1960s! That's lightening pace for geologists and geomorphologists who are normally quite happy to deal in "millions of years"!

However, nowadays, surges can be predicted with greater accuracy and, of course, communication technology is far more sophisticated and resilient in the new millennium. We are also better informed regarding sea defence requirements and the need for contingency planning. 

We cannot stop a similar set of meteorological circumstances arising in the future but we can, at least, minimise the impact. We have learned that from the experiences and memories of that fateful night back in 1953. At least.... I hope we have!

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From the Simply Whitstable Web Site