You can’t blame the Met Office for being a tad cautious about forecasting extreme weather and winds, especially in the wake of Michael Fish’s legendary ‘hurricane, what hurricane?’ episode in October 1987.

The trouble is that they are caught between a rock and a hard place. If they over forecast they will be accused of crying wolf and if they play down any potentially significant weather systems the world (not to mention Trevor Phillips who was a news reporter in October ’87 and gave them a roasting on TV) will shout that they got it wrong.

This time, though, for those of us in the UK anyway, they got it spot on, with long term forecasts warning of very strong winds today (18 January), and that’s what we’ve got. Apparently – and this is so far unconfirmed – a record gust of 99 miles per hour was recorded at the Needles this morning.