Surface Tension

Low-pressure weather systems are a familiar feature of the winter
climate in the northern Atlantic. While they often drive wind,
rain, and other unpleasantness against Europe’s rocky western
margin, this is typically on a “mostly harmless” basis. Early in
the evening of 31 January 1953, the weather in northern Europe was
damp, chilly, and blustery. These unremarkable seasonal conditions
disguised the fact that a storm of extreme severity was massing
nearby, and that an ill-fated assortment of meteorological,
geophysical, and human factors would soon coalesce into an almost
unprecedented watery catastrophe. The storm scudded past the
northern tip of Scotland and took an unusual southerly detour,
shifting towards a low-lying soft European overbelly of prime
agricultural, industrial, and residential land. The various people,
communities, and countries in its path differed in their readiness
and in their responses to the looming crisis, yet the next 24 hours
were about to teach them all some enduring lessons. In a world that
remains awash with extreme weather events—and with increasing
numbers of people living in vulnerable coastal areas—the story of
this particular storm system’s collision with humanity remains
much-studied by emergency planners, and much-remembered in the
three countries it so fatally struck.