Neil Oliver: Escape! – episode 93

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Re the storms hitting Les Écréhou

I know very little about the islands and obviously all the housing has to be above the highest of the high tides, but because I know nothing about them, I assume that they are not (now) occupied full time, probably because of supplies and accessability when storms are coming through.....


But I don't know all the prevailing winds, currents and storm fronts etc... and the sizes of the waves an all that....

I have seen photos of light houses in the channel, getting hit by monster storm waves - just frighteningly huge storm waves...


And the French rescue ships operating in the channel for stranded cargo ships and the storms that go through there...


But I am assuming that if the waves were HUGE - they would simply remove the houses off the rocks... like crumbs from a dinner table.

However the houses appear to have been there for many hundreds of years.


Can you tell me what goes on and why the waves are not coming through that wipe the houses off the rocks?

Regards

Shane Hanson

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Sum Fakts

Recent weather report.

A wave nearly 10m (32.5ft) high has been recorded off Jersey's south coast, which the island's meteorological department says is a new record.

It was measured as 9.93m-high earlier on Thursday by the met department's data buoy five miles out to sea.

Met officer John Searson said storms overnight in the English Channel had seen winds gusting to 75mph.

He said the wave was "incredibly high... and exceeds the previous maximum recorded by quite some way."

Mr Searson said: "If you were on the sea surface just ahead of it, it would be about the height of a two-storey house."