Issued by the Met Office at 05.00 on 24th March 2009There are warnings of gales in Tyne, Dogger, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Fitzroy, Rockle, Malin, Hebredes, Bailey.
Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth:
North backing West of Southwesterly 5 to 7, occasionally gale 8 at first excluding Portland and Plymouth decreasing 4 for a time. Moderate or rough. Showers then rain. Moderate or good.
From Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (Chapter 54)
… It was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, and with a dim horizon; while the winding river turned and turned, and the great floating buoys upon it turned and turned, and everything else seemed stranded and still… and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child's first rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles, stood crippled in the mud on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-stage and an old roofless building slipped into the mud, and all about us was stagnation and mud.
