The Great Storm of 1987 remains one of the most talked about weather events for a generation, it even featured in the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Twenty five years on, the storm has led to numerous improvements to the science, technology and communication of forecasting which has transformed the way the UK responds to severe weather.
Official blog of the Met Office news team 
I slept through the storm- I awoke to heroes welcome, I’m/was a forester, and ended up chainsawing my way the short distance from Maidenhead to Stoke Pogies where I worked. I had homeowners thrust £100 into my hands to clear a tree or two from their drives and that is before my actual job began. The great storm was, for me, the great bank balance.
A couple of years later another storm swept through [in the south east] but I think we had got used to the idea of wild weather. Common place now when a record is broken every month, but a pure time when it was just weather and climate change was to arrive a little later.